This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. John 15:8
Following Jesus will lead you to experiences you never dreamed of! You will be with Jesus as His weeps over those trapped in sin. You will feel the pain that Jesus feels. You will see those who were spiritually blind experience the joy of coming to God for the first time. You will see lives that were broken, made whole. You will see marriages restored; those in bondage, released; and those who mourn, comforted. At times it will be easy to follow Jesus. At other times, you will be tempted to abandon Him. Following Jesus can mean going through a storm or standing on a mountaintop.
Are you willing to follow Jesus anywhere, at any time, under any conditions? That is the only way you can follow Him!- Experiencing God- Henry Blackaby
I have been very blessed to witness much of the above in my life. Nothing can compare to the feeling of seeing those things happen right before your eyes either within a company of believers or a one-on-one setting. The spiritual highs when following Jesus cannot be compared to anything else. However, for every spiritual high, there seems to be at least one or two lows you have to go through as well.
Many of my personal lows took place because I did what so many Christians do and that was to get so wrapped up in my plans that I forgot to check with God and see what His plans were; MISTAKE!
Following Jesus is not about us asking or praying for Him to join us in our plans or on our journey; it is about us asking Him what the journey is to be! Personally I chuckle sometimes when I remind myself that I am to be a FOLLOWER of Christ not a LEADER of Christ. Simply put, how can you follow someone if it is your plan and you are leading the charge?! If we could just understand what the dictionary has already told us about the word follow, we would lead much more productive Christian lives. Follow: go or come after (a person or thing proceeding ahead); move or travel behind.
Notice in the definition above that part of it says: "MOVE"! Sometimes we need to MOVE out of the way of Jesus and let Him lead. (Actually all of the time!) Too often we pray for Him to help us do this or that. Pray for a certain thing, plan, idea or want that may totally not be in God's plan for us. Not to mention the fact that we miss a crucial element in our daily prayers that I brought up a few days ago about praying for God's will not OUR will in every thing we ask. No wonder we seem so lost on our journey the majority of the time and struggle with our relationship with Jesus.
Friends, the sooner we learn to actually FOLLOW Christ and quit trying to LEAD Christ, our lives, families, Churches and relationship will begin to experience all of the amazingly awesome things Henry brought out in His writings above, and SO much more.
Just keep in mind, there will be struggles as well because that is part of the purifying process! No gold can be pure gold until it has been through the fire. Just as no future resident of Heaven can be pure without the fires of this life. The awesome thing about both the gold and us going through the fire is:
There is someone greater standing watch to make sure that we are not consumed!! What a God we serve!!!!
God's Got This!!