John 1:43
By Drew Zuverink
"Jesus found Philip and said to him, 'Follow me.'"
It's a very normal thing to want to be like someone else. When we are children we want to be like the athlete, the singer, or maybe the grandparent that we admire. Then as adults we want to be like those who excel in our line of work, or if we are parents we want to be like the wonderful parents that we know - or maybe we want to be like someone else for different reasons, but the point is we all want to become more like someone else.
Jesus wants everyone to want to be like him. He doesn't want fans who admire him, he wants students who will learn his ways and then live them out in every area of their lives. To use an analogy from normal life, Jesus isn't just our math teacher he's also our science, history, writing, and PE teacher. In other words, Christians don't follow Jesus in some ways, we follow his teaching in every way - from finances to sex to how we treat our enemies.
While most of us would probably agree with that, it's important that every now and then we examine our actions to see if we are faithfully living up to it. After all, following Jesus in all that we do is a lot and it can be very easy to dismiss certain things as too silly, too unimportant, or maybe the opposite - too painful to follow. However, Jesus made no such concessions so neither should we. Instead, we should do our best to live in such a way that we wouldn't become "except when disciples." Except when disciples are Christians who generally follow Jesus' way of being human except when they're in certain situations. For example we might say things like:
"Drew's a wonderful disciple of Jesus, just not when he's driving!"
"Grandma's a student of Jesus until there's some juicy gossip."
"My sister behaves like Jesus except when it comes to forgiving family members."
"Dad protects our family like Jesus calls him to, but dad says he would seek revenge if someone hurt us unlike Jesus tells him to."
Instead of switching between our way of being human at times and Jesus' way at others, it's important to maintain consistent character for two big reasons.
1) Because the key to being faithful in the harder situations is being faithful in the more trivial ones first. As Jesus once said, "The one who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much" (Luke 16:10). This means we shouldn't just laugh off how we behave when we're behind the wheel or how we act when we're hungry because these are character forming moments. We are actually slowly becoming a certain type of person by how we respond in these situations. Therefore, it's important to seize them as opportunities to "be conformed into the image of Christ" (Romans 8:29).
2) Most of us simply won't have many opportunities to impact people by being faithful in the midst of something really big like persecution. However, we all have lots of opportunities to impact people by being faithful in how we go about normal life. Even more, our greatest desire is to please God. But because many of us live normal and quiet lives, we might feel discouraged that we don't seem to have many opportunities to please God in a "big" way. Take heart if this is you because we can please him countless times every day by simply being faithful in all that we do (1 Cor. 10:31).
Of course no one follows Jesus perfectly which means every Christian is an except when disciple at times. God isn't surprised when this happens, he actually expects it, and he has a lot of grace for us. That being said, "God's kindness is intended to lead us to repentance" (Romans 2:4). Praise God for his unending grace and love towards sinners like us because it frees us to acknowledge where we are making exceptions and to resubmit (or submit for the first time) that area of our life back to God. That way we can simply be - disciples of Jesus.
Comments