Following Jesus

I am on a journey to discover what God has done, and I am convinced that the biggest hindrance to our spiritual growth is simply not knowing what he has already done for us. So many of us would live far more fruitful lives if we truly grasped it. Here is the heart of the whole thing: Christianity is not about what you do to be saved. It is about what He did to save you.

Two Ways to Live

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said there are really two kinds of people, two ways to live your life, two ways to serve God. There is a narrow way that not many people find, and a broad, wide way that crowds are walking on. Why is the wide road so crowded? Because it seems logical. It fits the natural way we think.

The wide road tells you: if you don't kill anyone, you're fine. If you love the people who love you back, you're fine. The more you pray, the more you can get God to respond to you. It all sounds reasonable. But Jesus says this broad way will never unlock the power of the kingdom. Instead, it quietly feeds you a poisonous fruit.

Do you know why so many of us who follow Christ end up bitter, unhappy, joyless? It is because we are trying to earn our way. We were saved by grace, but somewhere along the line we started living by works. That is the tension I want us to sit with honestly.

If you were saved by what Jesus did apart from you, how do you now live by what Jesus has done apart from you?

We know salvation comes by grace, entirely based on what He did. But then we turn around and try to earn everything else, as though the anointing, the favor, and the fruit all depend on our performance. Whenever we try to earn by works what God freely gives by grace, we drift away from the very grace that saved us. So how do we live the same way we were saved? Jesus gives us the picture in one short sentence.

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Matthew 4:19

Follow Me

This is an invitation to everyone. It means that anyone can come to him and ask, "Lord, what should I do about this part of my life?" How should I relate to money? To pleasure? To fame and power? Following Jesus is coming to him with the real questions of your life and letting his answers shape you.

So let me ask you gently: are you a follower of Jesus? Notice I did not ask whether you are born again. There are many born-again people who are not actually following Jesus. When someone offends you, do you go and make peace, the way he taught? The way you treat the people closest to you, the way you speak about those in authority, are fair questions. Are you following Jesus in those places, or only claiming his name?

Here is something worth being honest about: anything that keeps you from saying yes to Jesus is the thing you are actually following. Someone once prayed, "God, I give you full control of my life." Moments later he sensed a nudge to go encourage a stranger, and everything in him refused. What if she rejects me? What if I look foolish? In that moment, who was he really following? His fears, his senses, his own mind. Many of us follow our emotions the same way. I don't feel like coming to church, I don't feel like reaching out, so I don't. If our feelings get the final vote, then our feelings, not Jesus, are the ones we follow.

Our vision at Grace Life Center is to be a community of followers of Jesus. The goal is not to follow any leader among us, however much we love them; the goal is to follow Jesus. And hear this clearly: you do not have to have all your beliefs sorted out before you can start following him. You simply have to decide to follow, to come and ask, "Master, how can I serve God rightly?" That is why this invitation is so wide. Whatever your religion, whatever your past, whatever label the world has placed on you, you are invited to come, right where you are. No one has to clean themselves up first.

And I Will Make You

"Follow me" is our part. "I will make you" is his part, the promise Jesus offers to those who have genuinely said in their hearts, "Yes, I will follow you, Lord." Because right after you make that decision, you make a strange discovery. Something inside you does not want to follow Jesus at all. Something in you does not want to give up control, even though that same something keeps failing and making a mess of things. It fights. It resists.

But Jesus promises that if you have made the decision, he himself will come and change you. Our role is to come and say, "I want to follow." His job is to make the deep changes within us that enable us to follow. This is why we should stop demanding that people change. They can't on their own; Jesus is the one who changes people. All any of us can do is keep making the decision and keep asking, day by day, "Lord, what do you want me to do here and now?" Simply knowing the answer does not guarantee obedience, but that prayer is where transformation begins. It invites Jesus not only to tell you what to do, but to work in you until you are able. And notice one more thing: in the original language, "I will make you" is plural. It is not you alone; it is all of you together. The change Jesus works, he works in community.

When You Discover You Cannot

When you begin to follow Jesus, you soon discover that you cannot actually follow him in your own strength. You trip up again and again. Take Peter, who had already decided to follow. He had fished all night and caught nothing, and Jesus told him to go back out and let down his nets again. It made no sense, and he argued. And yet Jesus met him, helped him, and eventually saved him.

No one who has ever said "I want to follow Jesus" avoids the moment where they cry out like Peter did: "Lord, I can't. Something is bent in me." I cannot love the people in my home the way I should. I cannot serve you the way I long to. And it is precisely there, when you realize that your good intentions are not enough to guarantee your success, that you finally collapse into his hands. Many of us need to do exactly that today.

We need to cease from our deadly striving, all the exhausting things we do to try to be good enough, and simply fall into his hands. Lord, save me. Unless you save me, I cannot be saved. That is not weakness; that is the doorway to grace.

It is not how well you live that makes you a disciple. It is who you are following that makes you a disciple.

Consider this. Someone might keep every commandment, never steal, and live as decently as anyone on earth, and still not be a disciple, because they may simply be following their own view of the world, which happens to line up with what Jesus teaches. Put them where something they treasure is on the line, and you will see who they are really following. Meanwhile, someone who looks like a bit of a mess may be the one truly following Jesus. When what Jesus asks collides with the hard places of their life, you can see the battle, you can see them fighting to obey. That struggle is often the surest sign of a real disciple.

Fishers of Men

Once you have decided to follow, and you have fallen into his hands so that he can live his life through you, he calls you to co-labor with him. You become his hands and feet as he goes into all the world, and you begin calling others to follow him too. Jesus' method was never to use the multitudes to reach a few. It was always to use a few to reach the multitudes, drawing people out of the grip of darkness and into the light of his kingdom.

So let me make this practical. I want to challenge all of us to make up our minds to pursue following Jesus above everything else. Ask him right now: "Lord Jesus, which area of my life am I not following you in? What have I placed in front of you?" Write it down. Then pray, "What can I do right now, in obedience to you, to show that I have said yes?" What ambition, what mindset, what old way of doing things do you need to lay down for him? And when you say yes, remember that he is the one who helps you. So ask him: help me, save me, save me even from myself.

We Cannot Do This Alone

Let me say something plainly. It is very hard to follow Jesus alone; I don't believe we were ever meant to. Jesus called twelve people to learn how to be his followers together. It happens in community. I cannot become a follower of Jesus in isolation; I have to decide to do it alongside others. Following Jesus is a call into community.

So the invitation goes both ways. I know you are not perfect, and you are weak in some areas. But so am I. So let's make a covenant with one another: I will help you follow Jesus as you help me follow Jesus. I will pray for you as you pray for me. Come crash into my world; I am part of how you grow, and you are part of how I grow. That is what it means to follow Jesus together.

This is why we can invite anyone to follow Jesus with us. None of us has arrived; we are all at different stages of the same journey, holding one another's hands as we go. And here is the freeing truth: it is not how far along we are that saves us.

We are saved in order to follow him. We are not saved by following him.

Can you see the difference? Salvation is one of the many things he does in us as he makes us into his own. We do not earn it by our following; we receive it, and then we follow. So we become a community devoted to discovering what could happen if we truly made Jesus the master of our lives, if he, and not our fears or backgrounds, were in charge. What would our homes look like then? I long to find out. I get the sense this world has not seen in a long time what could happen with fifty or a hundred people wholly dedicated to following Jesus, not following rules, but living in a real relationship with him. That is the invitation, and it is open to you today.