I have always heard of people sitting down to dig into a specific passage in the bible and not making it through the first verse. I always thought of this as weird… I mean, for me, I have never experienced this. You really can’t get through the first verse?
I guess the way I just assumed that in order for that to happen to you you would have had to been going through something crazy, or maybe coming out of a really tough period in life. What i am getting at is that I never would have thought that someone who isn’t going through some catastrophic event, or really doubting their faith, or something crazy like that… couldn’t actually experience not being able to get through a specific verse in the bible.
But I experienced the complete opposite of everything that I have believed until this point….
I couldn’t get past the first verse in a section of scripture I was trying to read. I was stopped. I couldn’t… for the life of me get over the power, the magnitude, and the amazing thought that was just presented. To be really honest, I couldn’t get over the small three word phrase that Jesus had just said.
“Come follow me.”
thats it. thats the very piece of scripture that stopped me in my tracks and wouldn’t allow me to go on… COME! FOLLOW! ME! thats what I read for some reason…. three words. three sentences. three purposes.
and I guess i just started to understand a little deeper that life, isn’t about just accepting the gift of grace once in our lives and moving on… its not about saying for just one time in our lives, “ok God, I believe you, and I know that your son died on the cross to save me from my sins!”
no…. I think we have it all wrong… CHRIST SAID, “Come, Follow me.”
“come” means that we are being called by Jesus. the way I heard this the other night was just this “We don’t find Jesus, Jesus found us!” he wants us to be a part of what he is doing… and so he is calling us. He is beckoning us. He is asking us to come.
Life isn’t about just believing one day and moving on… Jesus doesn’t just want us to confess our sins and keep living life, no… he wants us to FOLLOW! Following doesn’t meant that we just raise our hand in a powerful moment in a worship service or walking down the isle at an outreach event… Follow in the eyes of Jesus means that what you are getting ready to come to, is going to be an all out journey. Its going to be something that radically changes your life. Its going to be an experience. a path. an endeavor. a life-long process of change. Life with Christ is going to be life-altering… because he doesn’t say “come believe me” no….. he says “Come, FOLLOW me!!!”
Follow…who? JESUS…”me”…
and so when we get to the end and we understand finally that life is solely about seeking JESUS, with an all out experience, and trusting that he is the way to true life, we understand that he is in the center of it all! we can’t understand pain until we understand Christ, we can’t understand love until we understand Christ, and we can’t understand life until we understand Christ. Its all about him… every moment and every second! life… in the core, is his. and in the core is all about the presence and existence of God!
So… maybe you are remotely like me when I read these three words… you began to realize that this thing called life that we are soo blessed to be a part of, is really about following him. If we are doing anything else than following him, we are merely making less of his purpose in the world.
Are you Following him?
I mean, are you actually doing everything in your power to make a journey toward the heart of Jesus Christ?
Thats what we have to hang on to, because once we understand that life is all about Christ, we may then understand what our purpose is in this world… and we then get to read the next verse!