“Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” – John 12:25-26

Jesus is asking for your life. All of it. He isn’t merely asking you for a casual commitment to believe in Him and go to church regularly. He isn’t even just asking you to read your Bible daily and pray. He’s asking you to turn your whole life upside down and follow Him! Will you?

Jesus spoke these words as He prepared to go to His death and resurrection. He calls those who believe in Him to follow Him all the way. We must choose to follow Him in life, sacrifice, service, and even death. As we do, we follow Him into the pleasure and honor of the Lord!

There’s a tension between enjoying the seeming delights of earthly life and enjoying an abundant life in Christ that experiences, obeys, and serves God sacrificially while anticipating a glorious eternity with Jesus Christ. The more the usual details of earthly life consume our time and dominate our attention, the less we experience of the joy Christ wants us to enjoy.

The challenge is that for many of us today, we’ve constructed such a comfortable earthly life, numbed by our televisions and smartphones and overflowing with food, health, safety, and comfort, that it’s unimaginable to make risky, costly sacrifices to follow Jesus. Yet that’s exactly what He invites and rewards each of us to do. As unimaginable as such sacrifices are, the rewards of life spent truly following Christ are even more unimaginable. Are you ready to follow Jesus wherever He leads???

“If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” – John 11:48

Following Jesus is a threat to our social and political status. Always has been. Always will be until Christ returns. During His earthly ministry, the religious leaders didn’t debate the validity of Christ’s teachings or the significance of His miracles. They simply worried about what would happen to them if many people followed Jesus. Their comfortable system and situation would be completely overturned, both politically and socially. So they rejected and killed the Son of God to preserve the status quot!

We mustn’t be too quick to judge them. Jesus still invites each of us to follow Him. To truly follow Him still threatens everything we know and have become comfortable with in our lives. Many people, including many Christians, refuse to truly follow Jesus because they don’t want to experience the discomfort, loss, and disruption of familiar patterns required. So they either reject Jesus outright or keep Him at arms length while enjoying Sunday worship each week.

Jesus’ invitation to die to ourselves is a hard pill to swallow. This was what the leaders rejected. Because they had no vision for the greater reality offered by Jesus, they violently held onto their present reality. We mustn’t dwell too long on what we might lose for the sake of Jesus, though we should be aware of it. Instead, let us turn our minds to what we’ll gain if we’re willing to give up place and nation for Him: friendship with God, the joy of the Lord, the Fruit of the Spirit, the increasing awareness of God’s constant presence and glory, the joy of walking in God’s will, the satisfaction of living for the purpose for which you were created, and the significance of a life devoted to the Kingdom of God, just to name a few things.

We must let go our fear of following Jesus and truly follow!

“She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.’” – John 11:27 

Martha gets a bad rap! Usually, she’s remembered as the sister who worked too hard when Jesus came to visit. That was certainly true at one point in her life. However, if that’s all we know about Martha, then we miss how she grew in her love, faith, and understanding of Jesus. We miss her redemption which offers hope to all who’ve been distracted at time from experiencing the presence of Jesus and allowed busyness to crowd out our spiritual life.  

Martha wasn’t just the woman who worked too hard and missed out on Jesus’ teaching when He was in her home. She was also the woman who grew to make the exact same confession of faith for which Peter is celebrated! “You are the Christ, the Son of God”. This is an extraordinary confession of faith! 

In her darkest hour of grief, as her brother lay dead and buried, Martha embraced Jesus as “the Resurrection and the Life”. She believed that everyone who embraced Him would live forever. She believed in the one true hope of the world. Though convinced of the finality of her brother’s death, Martha was also convinced of Jesus power over death. She knew Jesus was the Christ, the anointed one of God and the Son of God, come to save the lost. When the presence of death was overwhelming, Martha embraced Jesus and life! 

Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. He invites each person to answer His question for him or her self, “Do you believe this?” Martha believed. Do you? 

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
– Psalm 63:1

David knew the Lord, he’d been anointed by God, his heart was after the Lord’s heart. Yet writing from a literal desert, he says his physical thirst is nothing compared to his spiritual thirst for a greater knowledge and experience of God! His desire to know God better was incredibly deep and powerful – it’s no wonder David accomplished so much through God’s power despite so many obstacles and setbacks!

Do you feel like David? If you aren’t yet a follower of Jesus, that desperate thirst for the divine can only be satisfied once you embrace Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, your Lord and Savior. If you’re a follower of Jesus, then God’s Spirit lives within you and you’re already united with Christ. However, you can still live a life that quenches your experience and awareness of God’s glory within you. Are you desperate for a greater awareness of God’s presence and work? Are you fainting with thirst for a richer experience of Christ-in-you? Are you wholeheartedly seeking a greater experience of God’s glory?

David models a posture we should all be in – knowing God, yet hungry to know Him more completely. God promises that those of His people who seek Him will find Him. So, as a Christian, are you pursuing God – through regular prayer, study, meditation, worship, and fasting? Are you crying out to Him for more of Himself as your number one most earnest prayer need? Are you seeking clarity about God’s will for your life and seeking to live within His will so that you’ll more fully experience His pleasure?

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” – John 10:11

Jesus is our great good shepherd! He loves us, cares for us, feeds us, and tends to our injuries and illnesses. He leads us, defends us, shields us, and directs us. Ultimately though, what makes Jesus the Good Shepherd is that He sacrificed Himself for us.Jesus came and gave His life as a sacrifice for our sins. Knowing that we were separated from our holy God by our unholy sin, Jesus came to reconcile us to His Father. Knowing that we were relentlessly stalked by evil and death, Jesus sacrificed Himself to save us from our most ancient enemies. Jesus lay down His life to pay the penalty for our sin so we would never have to. He died and rose to life to overcome the power of evil and death in the world.We’re saved and set free by the sacrifice of the Good Shepherd. To join His flock and receive the benefits of His sacrifice, all one must do is believe in Him. By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus, anyone can become a member of Jesus’ flock and enjoy abundant life through Him. Embrace the Good Shepherd Who loves and cares for you. Embrace the Good Shepherd Who died for you. Embrace the Good Shepherd Who rose from death and cares for you even now!