Who is Jesus to you? Is He an example of how to live a good life? Perhaps you consider Him to be the greatest teacher or philosopher who ever walked the earth. Most who read this blog would respond that He is their savior. Many would even dare to claim that Jesus is the Lord of their lives. Some people think that Jesus was a lunatic. Others think He is nothing more than legend, a nice story developed to encourage people to live moral lives. What others say is of no consequence. All that matters is who Jesus is to you.
Matthew
On Following Jesus
Sometimes I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall. I hang out with people who profess to be followers of Jesus, only to find out they are merely Christians. As Andy Stanley pointed out in a recent message, Christ -followers in the first century did not refer to themselves as Christians; they called each other disciples. There’s a huge gap between those two words. A Christian is someone who, to some degree or another, believes in Jesus. A disciple is one who doggedly pursues and obeys Christ, one who asserts He is the Lord of their life, and actually lives like they mean it. Which word better describes you?
Jesus is Everything
Some day I’m going to figure out why we go looking for things to satisfy the longings of our heart. We have devoted our lives to serving God, the One who created us, loved us, and died for us. He has been there for us our entire lives. Yet the moment something doesn’t go our way, we react like spoiled children and immediately begin seeking comfort and enjoyment in the things of this world. We consume our time with endeavors that bring at best a fleeting distraction that brings no long term joy or fulfillment. Meanwhile our King waits patiently on the sidelines.
Becoming God’s Will for Your Life
In a recent post (see “God’s Will Today”), I wrote that “God’s will isn’t something you do, it’s someone you become”. I wanted to spend a little more time on this because it is the key to living a fulfilled life, one that is spent following Jesus. We spin our wheels and waste so much time in futile pursuit of what God wants us to do with our lives. The question should not be, “Lord, what do you want me to do with my life?” Instead we should be asking, “Lord, who do you want me to become in my life?”
What it Means to Follow Jesus
The most popular post I ever wrote was titled, “What Does it Mean to be a Christian?” I wrote that after a close friend of mine had accepted the Lord and I wanted to give him a primer of sorts as to what living a life devoted to Christ should look like. I believe that we who have called ourselves Christians for a long time probably skim over articles such as that one, assuming they are too basic or that we already know what being a Christ-follower entails. The past couple of years have convinced me that nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of people calling themselves Christians have no idea what it means to truly follow Christ.