bible and theology on Following Jesus

The wise men were experts in the movement of the stars and signs in the heavens. Their inquiry thrusts the provincial village into a cosmic concern. It is not the scientific data they are searching ou...

The Oxford scholar and apologist C. S. Lewis... once closed a lecture to a group of apologists like this:  I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologis...

We hear of wild new theories about Jesus. Every month or two some publisher comes up with a blockbuster saying that he was a New Age guru, an Egyptian freemason or a hippie revolutionary. Every year o...

Hebrews 1:1-2 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom h...

Good Shepherd, You call me by name, so I can know you You prepare the way, so I can follow You call others, so we will have companions You lay down your life, so we may live Glory to You and your savi...

As Tim Stafford writes, Jesus has become “deceptively familiar. People think they know all about him, so they never look at him. When they finally do, they are surprised at what they find. Jesus may s...

Following always involves a coming down, a humbling of oneself and a serving of others. Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan theologian, captured this condescension of God in his sermon "The Excellency ...

Reflection We all are aware of cultures that have a hierarchy—a pecking order. The elite and the hoi polloi. The acceptable and the unacceptable. In such cultures, the hierarchy determines the role. ...

God of grace, we look to your son, today, who began his journey to the cross. As we trace his footsteps to Jerusalem, please give us your grace. For we know that we are called to follow Jesus, to carr...

Father God, you come to us in the everyday. You give us your Word and your Spirit that we might hear your voice, and follow your ways. We confess that we have neglected your words to us and pretended ...

Sisters and brothers, no one can follow Jesus for you or me. That’s something we have to do for ourselves. But when we do, that’s when real life begins. So go out into the world this week, living real...

During the life of Jesus on earth, the word He chiefly used when speaking of the relations of the disciples to Himself was: “Follow me.” When about to leave for heaven, He gave them a new word, in whi...

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...

When Jesus invites people to follow him, he doesn’t forecast the outcomes nor guarantee change overnight. He doesn’t promise that we’ll stop cussing in traffic tomorrow and never do it again, or that ...

Jesus is not one of many ways to approach God, nor is He the best of several ways; He is the only way.

But it wasn’t just his new message that made Jesus irresistible. It was Jesus himself. People who were nothing like him liked him. And Jesus liked people who were nothing like him. Jesus invited unbel...

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . ...

Does the Gospel I preach and teach have a natural tendency to cause people who hear it to become full-time students of Jesus? Would those who believe it become his apprentices as a natural “next step”...

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that...

Our problem with following Jesus is we’re trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of Him.

We are not called to help people. We are called to follow Jesus, in whose service we learn who we are and how we are to help and be helped.

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.