What Does It Mean to Follow Jesus?Sýnishorn

He Wants You

Without the grace of Jesus: a hopeless end. With the grace of Jesus: an endless hope. — Rick Warren

If you’ve gotten to the final day of this Plan and you feel that you need to do more spiritual activity to follow Jesus, then we need to set the record straight. 

What does God really want from us? Does He want our religious activities like attending church or doing a Bible study? Does He want us to refrain from watching or doing bad things? Doing good things and refraining from doing bad things is not the goal of following Jesus. Loving Him is. That’s what He wants. 

He wants you.

God wants our hearts and entire devotion. And then guess what will happen? We will do things like attend church and study the Bible because we want to know Him more. We will consider what we watch and say because we want to be more like Him. We will be kind and generous because we want to do what He’s called us to do. Our spiritual activities should not come first, nor should they be obligatory. They follow our heart’s devotion.

When we say yes to Jesus and receive His salvation, we die to self. But, the next day we will have to die again. And the next day and the next. The battle with our selfish desires occurs from the moment we wake up until the moment we drift off to sleep. Dying to self is an everyday event. The more we follow Christ, the more we should be dying to self. Why? Because we have sought after God and learned this: His higher, better ways supersede our mediocre, average ways.

So, what happens when we mess up? Is He mad at us? Are we going to get punished? Will we miss out on Heaven? Is there a spiritual button that is pressed that sends us back to the beginning for a do over? 

Hardly. 

One thing we have to realize is that when we fully surrender to Jesus and allow Him to live through us, we are getting full access to His grace. We cannot exhaust His grace for it covers a multitude of sin. Even when our sin quota reaches “a multitude,” we are covered.

We hope that frees your mind just a little. To know that as Christ followers, we get access to His unspeakable power, His never ending love, and yes, His limitless grace. There is no sin we can commit and no distance we can travel away from Him where He will not bridge the gap with the full force of his power, love, and grace. That’s Someone worth surrendering to and living for.

And that Someone is Jesus. 

Reflect

• Do you feel that you live fully surrendered to Jesus? What is it that keeps you from doing so? Spend time asking God to reveal any obstacles that prevent you from living completely surrendered to Him.