following jesus on Consumer Culture

A group of fourth-graders at a Christian school was given an assignment to draw what they would like to do if Jesus spent a day with them. After working diligently on their pictures, one little girl a...

Our mistake is to think that following Jesus consists in loving our enemies, going the ‘second mile,’ turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully—while living the rest of our lives just...

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.

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

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.

Jesus says, "I want you to follow me so fully, so intensely, so enduringly that all other attachments in your life look weak by comparison"

Abiding is the continually renewed decision that what has been done once for all by the action of Jesus shall be the basis, the starting point, the context for all my thinking and deciding and doing.

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...

Context This text comes near the midpoint of the Gospel of Mark, and its central narrative position is more than matched by its pivotal thematic content. Jesus has turned from his focus on ministry i...

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...

Context This text comes near the midpoint of the Gospel of Mark, and its central narrative position is more than matched by its pivotal thematic content. Jesus has turned from his focus on ministry i...

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

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. ...

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...

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”...

Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word J...

Introduction Jesus is the deliverer of Israel (1:54–55, 69–75, 77–79) Jesus states his mission in Luke 4:16-19: to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives and the oppressed. The word ...

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...

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 ...

Sometimes to follow in the footsteps of Jesus is to walk away from others or to let them walk away from us.

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...

Cast your net again, We know this familiar foolishness So we cast it… we cast it wide, drag it deep, sweep it around the sea Suddenly! So many fish! The cry goes up with our hope It is the Lord! It...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Broader Context of Philippians Paul is concerned that Judaizers (those that require Christians to follow the Torah) are going to corrup...

T. S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good. The way of Jesus tells us, by contrast, that any number of syste...

Leader: O come, let us fix our eyes on Jesus,  People: the founder and perfecter of our faith, Leader: who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, ...

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...

Lord and Father, we confess that we have set our minds not on divine, but on human things. Ignoring your counsel and refusing your call, we have put our own needs and desires first and have leaned on ...

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 ...

What shall I say of the Romans themselves, who fortify their own empire with garrisons of their own legions, nor can extend the might of their kingdom beyond these nations? But Christ’s name is extend...

Maybe this sounds silly, but go outside and look up. You cannot see yourself. All you see is a vast expanse of possibilities. Look down. You will see yourself and little else. This is true in life. Lo...