If you want to look like Jesus, love like Jesus, and live like Jesus, you must reorient your life. There’s no way we can continue living as we always have and be a disciple of Jesus. I think this is what so many of us get wrong when we come to Jesus. We see Him as an addition to our lives instead of a complete replacement. There is no negotiation process for our surrender.
We give up our lives and Jesus takes over. From that moment forward, being a disciple demands you reorient your life to pursue only Jesus and the things that will advance His Kingdom. This will seem like a very large ask unless you are so in love with Jesus that you can’t imagine a moment without Him.
In a practical sense, what does it look like to reorient your life towards Jesus? The details will be different for each of us, but the general themes will be the same. Everything you prefer or desire must change. Comfort and security go out the window. Our entertainment choices will be different. Career goals will alter and your choice of friends may even come under scrutiny. If that all seems too much for you, then stop for a moment and consider what Jesus did for you. While being fully God, He was also fully man. And yet, even in His humanness, Jesus did not pursue the pleasures of this world. He outright rejected them (Matthew 4:1-11). He knew what it meant to face the temptations of power, wealth, and all the good things in this world. Instead of those things, He chose to be beaten beyond recognition and killed in one of the most inhumane ways known to man. And He did it for you.
No sacrifice was too great for Jesus when it came to saving you and me. He asks only that we do the same for Him. No matter what we give up, it will never compare to His sacrifice for us. Remember that what we sacrifice are only things that will lead to our ultimate ruin. They won’t last. When you reorient your life towards Jesus and away from yourself, you live for what matters. Everything else you’ve been spending your time on will in the end be worthless. Only what we do for Jesus will remain.
When we reorient our lives to live look like Jesus, love like Jesus, and live like Jesus, it will transform the world as we know it. Some of us will quit our jobs and go serve in dangerous places to reach those who have never heard the Gospel. Some of us will cash in lucrative portfolios to support the work of those going to other nations and to pay for the creation and distribution of materials that will draw others to Christ. Others of us will continue using the gifts and talents entrusted to us by God, but no longer for the aim of promoting ourselves but for proclaiming the name of Jesus.
I don’t know what reorienting your life will look like for you. I do know your life will change. It must, and so must mine. God’s Kingdom will manifest itself around us when the people of God will take seriously the command to surrender everything to Him. The world will change if we will change because God will work through our surrender to make His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. It begins with me and you reorienting our lives. It will end with a united Church living life in full surrender and welcoming the coming Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.