“Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning” – Mark 13:35

Jesus is coming back, but nobody on Earth knows exactly when. Jesus made clear that His precise timing would be surprising, though there will be signs. For this reason, His people must always be ready. His return could be today or it could be thousands of years from now. That said, the current events of the world may be indicating His return will be sooner rather than later. Take these signs seriously! Regardless of when Jesus returns, today is certainly a day closer to His return than yesterday was. Are you prepared for your Master’s return? What will He say about how you’ve lived your life?

As followers of Jesus, we’ve been commanded and warned by our Lord to live lives that are always prepared for His return. What does that mean? It means being diligent about the work He’s given us. We must devote our time, talent, and treasure to making disciples of Jesus Christ. We must be living increasingly holy lives that reflect God’s saving grace transforming us. We must be sharing the truth and hope of Jesus Christ with those who haven’t heard. We must be teaching new believers how to follow Jesus. We must be helping established believers become more like Jesus. And we must be going and sending disciples out into God’s harvest fields from our neighborhood to the ends of the earth.

Currently, there are billions of people who have not yet had the opportunity to respond to the Gospel. Jesus has commanded us to go to them. As His followers, we must be mobilizing His people to go, to learn about, pray for, and support those who go, and to go ourselves, even if it’s just to our newly arrived neighbors from far away. As we await the return of Jesus, we should live our lives with joy, abundance, and devotion to Jesus. We must align our attitudes, words, and actions to the commands and example of Jesus. We must pursue holiness and walk without shame, confident in the Lord’s return. #FollowJesus

“So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.” – John 12:10-11

If you’re a present day Christian and very familiar with the story of Lazarus, you can easily miss the significance of the miracle Jesus performed. Lazarus wasn’t just a little bit dead when Jesus raised him. Lazarus was four-days, rotting, decomposing, stinking, in the tomb dead!!! Bringing him back was understood to be impossible. Several prophets (and Jesus) had raised recently dead people back to life. That was good but not unimaginable. NOBODY reversed the natural process of decomposition and restored a man to full life and health after four days. Then Jesus did!

Many who saw or heard about this miracle knew what it meant. Jesus truly was the Messiah, the Christ. He was the anointed one of God come to establish the eternal kingdom of God on earth. He had power infinitely beyond any mere prophet. God had come in the flesh! The raising of Lazarus from the dead was the most important and persuasive miracle Jesus performed apart from His own resurrection. It was a whole other level beyond His previous miracles.

This miracle was so persuasive that crowds were making the short journey from Jerusalem to Bethany to see Lazarus. They met or talked with Lazarus and his sisters and they believed in Jesus. The possibility that Jesus really was Who the evidence of this miracle said He was absolutely intolerable to the religious leaders. They decided there was only one thing to do…. Destroy the evidence! They didn’t just want to kill Jesus to shut down this new movement. They wanted to kill Lazarus to keep people from believing the plain truth about Jesus that he represented.

Their love of their authority was so much stronger than their love of God. Their fear of change so entrenched in their hearts that they wanted to destroy God’s work to prevent people from being reconciled to Him. Those were some seriously hard hearts! Understand the significance of the Lazarus story. Embrace what it reveals about Jesus. Don’t let it merely be a really cool, fun Sunday School story. Jesus is the resurrection and the life! #FollowJesus

“Those who heard it said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But he said, ‘What is impossible with man is possible with God.’” – Luke 18:26-27

Sometimes it’s obvious when people are very far from God. In those cases, everyone readily agrees that person would need divine intervention to get right with the Almighty. Other times, we can be fooled into thinking, “He or she is a good person” or “I’m a good person”. We see someone’s kindness, good deeds, accomplishments, success, health, or wealth and imagine they’ve really gotten close to God.

That isn’t how salvation works! God is absolutely, completely, utterly perfect. There is no shadow of darkness, sin, or evil in Him. Every human being falls far short of God’s absolute holiness. It doesn’t matter how wealthy, successful, nice, or wise you are, you can’t save yourself. It’s utterly impossible. The best human being you’ve ever met or heard about can’t save him or her self. It’s impossible for us to save ourselves.

What is impossible for us is possible for God. He made the way for us to be saved and reconciled to Him. He made the way for our sins to be forgiven and our relationship with Him healed. That way is Jesus, His Son. Jesus lived the holy life we can’t and died as our substitute on the cross. His death paid the penalty for our sins and when we believe in Him, we are saved. Just as Jesus rose from the dead, we too will rise to eternal life.

What God has made possible through Jesus is freely available to everyone who hears this good news. Have you believed? Has God already done for you what’s impossible for you to do yourself? If so, rejoice and share this good news with others. If not, repent of your sins and believe in the Lord Jesus! #FollowJesus

“And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.” – Matthew 21:19

At first glance, this seems like quite an odd little story! It feels so unlike Jesus. Why would He curse a tree by the side of the road?!? Two things help us understand the deeper meaning of the story. The first is that the tree had beautiful, healthy leaves and gave every appearance that it should have fruit growing on it. It looked good from a distance but produced nothing of value. The second is that the fig tree was a symbol of the nation of Israel.

What Jesus does with the tree is a metaphor for what He’s doing in Jerusalem. In the context of what’s happening early in the week that He would be crucified, Jesus is symbolically condemning a nation that looks great from a distance but is producing no spiritual fruit. A nation that prided itself in holy rituals, rule following, and appearances but had no love for God in their hearts. In condemning the fig tree, Jesus condemned all Israel with its busy and proud Pharisees and Sadducees but no real spiritual fruit as God’s people. Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of holy appearances and hard, unholy, untransformed hearts.

Bringing this story forward to the present day, Jesus hasn’t changed. He still condemns those who appear religious and claim His name as Christians but live unfruitful, unholy, selfish, untransformed lives. The invitation to follow Jesus isn’t about joining an honor society. It’s about submitting your life to the Lordship of Jesus. It’s about taking up your cross daily and denying yourself to love and serve God and neighbors. It’s about growing the fruit of the Spirit in your life while making disciples as you go through life. If a Christian isn’t doing those things, then he or she isn’t different from that fig tree! #FollowJesus

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well.’ And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.” – Mark 10:52

Happy Reformation Day! While most people are celebrating something else today, this is the true cause for celebration. October 31, 1517 marks the beginning of what would become the Protestant Reformation. Though there had been various reform movements in prior centuries, this is the one that gained lasting traction and guided Christians in the West back to the simple faith and clear teaching of Scripture. In protesting the corrupt sale of indulgences to fund church construction by claiming to release souls from suffering in purgatory, Martin Luther began a return to the authority of Jesus, the Word made flesh, and the Bible, the Word of God.

At the heart of the Reformation was the return to the Bible as the authoritative teaching of God over against any and all man-made traditions in the church. Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone! The crown jewel of the return to Scripture was the rediscovery of the Gospel and the doctrine of Grace. We are saved not by good works or by the efforts of the church but by God’s grace alone (Sola Gratia) through faith alone (Sola Fide) in Christ alone (Solus Christus). All for the glory of God alone (Soli Deo Gloria)!

In returning to the plain teachings of Jesus, the Apostles, and the prophets, our eyes were collectively opened. Like blind men and women who were desperate to see Jesus, Christians in the West recovered their sight and were free to follow Jesus. He is our only means of salvation. The healing of our souls from slavery is only accomplished through faith in Him. Like that blind man who was healed, #FollowJesus!