Following Jesus

To be a Christian is to be like Christ. It’s a losing of your life, in order to somehow find it. A denying of who you are…a taking up of something else (your cross)…in order to be molded into the image of Christ. I mean Jesus said it himself, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” So to be a follower of Christ there first comes a giving up…followed by a taking up.

The giving up is simple. Not the act itself, but the understanding of what Jesus is demanding. He is demanding my life. The giving up is a forfeiting of my selfishness, my desires, my purposes, my dreams, my own way. It’s that moment (or moments) when I come to Jesus and set my life at His feet and say “Its yours, do with me as you wish. For your Name not mine” The losing of myself…in order to find the new me.

The taking up of my cross, the new me, is where it gets complicated. What is my cross? What is your cross? Whatever it is we have to be sold out to it. Jesus was. And if we refuse to sell out, to give up everything, then we have turned our back on Jesus, and walked away from our CROSS. The rich young ruler is a perfect example…Jesus told him that the only thing he lacked to be His disciple was to sell all his possession (EVERY THING HE HAD) and give it to the poor. The man refused and walked away from his CROSS.

Are all CROSSES this radical?

Remember the story of Zacchaeus? He was rich, filthy rich, and when Jesus came to have dinner at his house Zacchaeus stood up and said, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor…” HALF? Doesn’t he know that Jesus wants it all? And yet Jesus turns to Zacchaeus and says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” Zacchaeus’s response to Jesus is good enough to inherit the kingdom of God. Yet he didn’t give it all. John the Baptist’s response to the crowds who asked him what they should do to inherit the kingdom of God is the same; “If you have two coats, give one to the poor.” Not both? And this doesn’t only occur with possessions…

The twelve disciples of Jesus left everything they knew to follow Jesus. Their jobs, their families, their friends, everything. Yet we have the story in Mark 5 where Jesus frees a man who had been possessed by a legion of demons. After setting the man free Jesus gets in a boat to leave and the man who had been cured BEGS Jesus to go with Him. But Jesus refuses to let him go. This man was willing and ready to forsake all to follow the one who healed him. To GIVE UP EVERYTHING, yet he is turned away…And told to “go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”

This leads me to my question…

Maybe we have been missing the point? Maybe the point of following Jesus is not about how much we are willing to give up for Him, but maybe it is about listening to what He is asking us to give up. Maybe there are different degrees of discipleship? What if some of us have sold everything we owned and traveled to the furthest village in Africa to teach others about Christ, but Christ was asking us to “return home and tell how much God has done for you.” Is it possible to be out of God’s will while serving Him? Could we go when He says stay? Is there just one plan that God has for each of us or are there options? Am I missing the whole point of following Jesus?

Answer any one of those that you want…because I am dying to know what you guys think!

Behind the Blog

I have been wrestling with the idea of blogging for awhile. It just always seemed funny to me, and maybe even a little vain, to think that people might care about what I think about. And to be honest I still have a feeling most won’t; which I understand, because I know what goes on in my mind and I can hardly entertain myself with my thoughts, much less others.  But here I am…blogging.

The truth is I miss discussion. I miss the late nights with friends, talking and probing at life’s questions. The asking of gut wrenching questions. The bouncing of thoughts. The challenges of changing our lives to follow the footsteps of our Leader. The wrestling with what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And the struggling to help His kingdom come. The talking, the probing, the challenging, the wrestling, and the striving…that’s what I miss. And the desire for these things has pushed me over the edge into the blogging world.

So this is my chosen path of reconnecting...Reconnecting with the voices in my life that have played such a prominent role in shaping who I am. And a path of connecting…connecting me (and us) to those outside my (our) world of influence so that a new (or maybe old) path might be forged. So I ask you guys to join with me in a discussion…a discussion that will hopefully push us all toward a life molded in the image of Christ.