Stray Thoughts: What Do We Do? Follow Jesus

For the past couple of ‘Stray Thoughts’ posts, I’ve been considering our situation and what we as Christians are to be doing in response. Thus far, I’ve encouraged you to rejoice in what Jesus is doing even as you need to grieve because of the evil that He is using to accomplish His goal. That leaves one more thing for me to add to that list. We need to follow Jesus. That may sound obvious, but there is more involved in that than what many think.

So, follow Jesus. And what does that mean? I think that it would be fair to say that one common answer to that question would go something like this. We need to take the truths revealed in the Bible and apply them to life. How’s that sound? Well, to be sure, it’s true. It’s true but incomplete. And that is the source of so many problems: providing true but incomplete answers. Including what is missing makes all the difference. And that missing part is what I want to talk about.
 

 

Now, let’s take that common answer, tweak it a bit and ask it again. But this time, ask it of people who are devoted to other religions and philosophies. ‘What does it mean to follow your teacher?’ And what will they say? They’ll talk about how important it is to read and understand the writings of and about their teacher and then to apply to life what is found in those writings. That’s what a Buddhist will say. That’s what a Muslim will say. That’s what a Jew will say. And that, pretty much, is all that they can say. But we can and need to say more. And here is the reason why that is true. Buddha, Mohammed as well as Moses and the Prophets are all dead. But Jesus is alive. Shouldn’t that make a difference in what it means for us to follow Him?

There is more to following Jesus than reading what He said and what has been said about Him in the Bible and figuring out how to live it all.

Ponder what Jesus was talking about when He said to Peter and the others, ‘Follow Me’. What was He calling them to do? With those words Jesus was saying, ‘Come, walk with Me. Listen to Me. Talk with Me.’ And isn’t that what they did for those three years as they traveled through the countryside? Spending time with Him, watching Him interact with the common folk as well as the elite, then conversing with Him about what they heard and saw so that they could understand what He was up to?

When Jesus invited those men to follow Him, His goal was to mentor those men and guide them so that they would be able to participate in Jesus’ plan to change the world, to save the world. And Jesus was quite successful in achieving that goal. As a result, the men He mentored made quite a splash. The book of Acts records only the highlights.

So, are we to follow Jesus today? Or is this something reserved for those first century people?

To be sure, Jesus no longer walks the earth. So, we cannot see Him. But though that is true, is it too much to expect Him to mentor us and guide us so that we also would be able to participate in His plan to save the world? Or is it just a matter of studying a book and doing our best to figure out how to relate to life what we see in those pages?

Personally, I’m up for some mentoring and guiding. And I think that Jesus is too. In fact, if He isn’t up for that, then what’s the point of having the Spirit with us? If the Spirit isn’t the means by which Jesus continues to mentor and guide His disciples, then what exactly is it that the Spirit does?

Jesus said,

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another (Paraclete), that He may be with you forever; John 14:16

That word Paraclete can be translated in a number of ways: mediator, intercessor, helper, counselor. But that’s not what I’m interested in. The word that I want to focus on is ‘another’. The Father will give us ‘another’ Paraclete. So, who was the first Paraclete? It was Jesus Himself. Jesus promises to replace Himself with another who will do what He has been doing. He promises the presence of the Spirit who will mentor and guide disciples and, in this way, make it possible for people like us to follow the living Jesus. We all need to know what the Bible has to say. In fact, we need to do a much better job on that than what is all too common these days. But what good is what we find there without Someone to mentor us and guide us in exactly how to use the wisdom of the Scriptures so that we can change the world? The Spirit of Jesus is with us to do exactly that.