THE FUTURE IS FOLLOWING
How many followers do you have? You probably know the number of followers (or friends) on your social media. Much of our lives are inundated with followers, friends, likes, and any other form of personal praise. We desire it. Some of us feed off of words of affirmation. I want to know I’m liked, appreciated, anything.
Maybe as a new year unfolds, you are trying to make a plan for how you can accomplish your goals? Perhaps you are working out what your future career will be? Maybe you are dealing with your family relationships and working to improve them? Maybe you are trying to overcome some obstacles or addictions, and you are making a plan with boundaries for your benefit? Maybe these are all great things, but there is a lot of ‘you’ in those sentences, and maybe we need less ‘you?’
That was rude.
But maybe the problem is one of ‘us’ trying to accomplish things (even good things) but without anything more than... ‘us.’ And this all rotates around the idea that to be liked, followed, supported, or fulfilled, we must create our own path. Our own ideas. Our own vision. But what if the most significant need you had was to stop trying to pave your own way and start following?
Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. - Luke 9:23-24
From the words of Jesus... Give up your stuff and pick up His stuff. There is something complex but uniquely powerful about this concept. Jesus points each of us to fulfillment, happiness, joy, meaning. But it is all found upside down to our everyday thoughts and tendencies.
Jesus is saying to stop trying ‘your’ stuff. Start following my stuff, and all the things you yearn for and desire will be provided. But it starts not with leading but following.
Maybe today could mark the first day of a new goal. To follow Jesus.
OUR LIVES SHOULD ADAPT TO THE LIFESTYLE OF JESUS.
Not just in word but in action. In lifestyle. That every day you would drop the phone and pick up the Bible. That every morning you would sit in silence and prayer rather than on Youtube. That every night you would ponder your actions and words for the day and did you do them with integrity rather than binge Netflix.
What if we began to adapt to the lifestyle of Jesus more? How would our lives, attitudes, and outlooks on life be transformed by following Jesus daily?