How to follow Jesus

Two thousand years ago, a friend might say to you, "Hey, come with me today. There's this preacher at the Jordan River saying some funky things. I think he might be the messiah. I mean, Jehosophat thinks maybe he is. I dunno. Come with me." You probably wouldn't get into the Inner Circle of Christ Followers, but if you listened to him, and something in you came alive, then what? You go back home, you think about it, you listen to all the news. When talking with others after the rabbi teaches on Sabbath, you might be bold enough to say, "I think the Nazarene is the Messiah." You might stand up for him in conversations. You might change some things about your life. You might start thinking differently. You would probably hang out with people who were also thinking about him.


I think, if I had been a Jew in Jesus' day, those would have been scary times. You might like his teaching, but then he is executed by the Romans, through the political manipulations of your nation's leaders? Eek. Now are you going to stand up and say, "I'm with the criminal that you all hate a whole lot!" I mean, you had a pretty quiet, normal little Jewish life before this. Standing up often means standing alone. It's not as romantic as you might think.

In Matthew 23, Jesus says that his day is a day of decision, and there is a huge amount of accountability for those who lived while he was on the earth:

And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets....And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. (v.30-31, 35)

We should take warning about boasting over what we would do in Jesus' day, what we would do in the end times, what we would do in the days of Hitler. Do you see your times now? Are you following Jesus in your own day?

Some people learn what it means to follow Jesus because they saw their parents or grandparents follow him. Some people have that question answered by their church: this is what my church tells me to do, and this is therefore the pattern of how I follow Christ. When I was saved as a teenager, I didn't have the background of a Christian home, but my little Baptist church used the resources of their denomination and discipled me with Survival Kit for New Christians (Teenage Edition). It was all about tithing, prayer, attending church, reading your Bible--a lovely gift to start me on my journey.

In my next post, I'm going to talk about some things I've learned about how to follow Jesus. Because he is not teaching today at the Jordan River, we have to rely on each other in this following Jesus thing. He set it up this way, and very deliberately we are told not to give up being together with other believers (Hebrews 10:25).