Why is it so hard to believe Christ and trust him completely? Christ wants to give us his life and spirit, and if we look to him for only a moment, our hearts tell us: Here is one we can trust. Yet each of us knows feelings of fear and anxiety. Something in us seeks...
The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics. …The following two...
Journeying with Jesus also means to be in a community, to become part of the alternative community of Jesus. Discipleship is not an individual path, but a journey in a company of disciples. It is the road less traveled, yet discipleship involves being in a community...
With an abstract idea it is possible to enter into a relation of formal knowledge, to become enthusiastic about it, and perhaps even to put it into practice; but it can never be followed in personal obedience. Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably...
It’s hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of God’s new age, a kingdom of surprises.
Churches are filled with “undiscipled disciples,” as Jess Moody has called them. Most problems in churches today can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ.
When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. It transcends the difference between the law and the gospel. Christ...
Discipleship, we know from the life of the Christ whom we follow, is not membership in a clerical social club called a church. Discipleship is an attitude of mind, a quality of soul, a way of living that is not political but which has serious political implications,...
He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him,...
How could following Jesus really be that easy? Didn’t he say, himself, that people had to be prepared to leave behind family, possessions, even their own life? Yes, he did. But the ease and the joy, the rest and refreshment which he offered, all spring from his own...