How to live as a follower of Jesus

Think of somebody drawing a picture: They might have great concentration at first, but after the while they’ll probably look up and around them. If they keep drawing while their eyes are not on the page, chances are they’ll scribble all over the place – which doesn’t ruin the picture, it just changes the direction a little. They have even stopped looking at the photograph they are modeling because they have the ‘idea’ of the picture. It is not a focused practice any longer.  

We are all drawing a picture with our lives. Jesus Christ is the photograph we are trying to model it after. And the rest is self-explanatory. 

T H E   S C R I B B L I N G 

I rediscovered an abandoned page in my old ‘personal growth journal’ that consists of a bulleted list of things that I want in my life a few years down the line. Simple things like regular hikes and foodie nights with friends; and big things too. It was a terribly sad moment of realising I’ve been scribbling all over the place, directionless. My goals, the actualization of my calling, were gathering dust. 

Your gifts aren’t coincidental; they are your guidelines. That’s your part to play. It’s as if your whole life is dry earth with seeds scattered around. Only when you allow Christ to drench your life in such intense grace and love will these seeds sprout- and become your calling-tree (Psalm1).

“We all have something important to say; yet still we lean on Jesus for our breath”-@golden. 

T H E   D R A W I N G 

We need people. We need people. We need people. I cannot stress this enough. In this past month I had my first meeting with a dear friend, Christine, for what we call: Calling Coffees. This is time intentionally spent for checking in with how we are doing with following God’s call on our lives – our part to play in the Missio Dei. Essentially we’re pulling each other’s attention back to the page with the drawing just before the scribbling begins. To say it’s been life-giving is an understatement. 

God’s call can rather be explained more like a compass than it is a map. It’s not a step-by-step ladder to success, but rather something that pulls your attention back to the drawing every now and then. If we see Christ as a map, with direct lines to follow and boxes to tick, we might be dangerously close to believing in the “idea” of Him instead of living with Him as a person. Like the person drawing the picture, we can stop looking to Jesus because we have an ‘idea’ of who He is and how He wants us to live. The scribbling begins.

S T A R T I N G   A G A I N 

There will always be a reason to wait for a special occasion, but life itself is a special occasion. “Your life isn’t about a big break, it’s about taking one significant life-transforming step at a time”. It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. So yes, you can start right away – the important question however is where you’re starting from.

 “Rest time is not waste time. In the long run we will do more by sometimes doing less” (C. Spurgeon). More often than not, it is in the pause that passion is restored. Is it time for a new page? Can this chapter be salvaged? We begin by turning to God, that’s what Jesus did every time He felt wearied or worried. If He needed to do this, how much more do we. To link with last month’s letter: the filling precedes the emptying. Disappearing for a bit to get your life together is okay. You don’t begin by doing something, you start by yielding.

We live as followers of Jesus by keeping our gaze fixed on Him - that way we won't get distracted or forget why we started. Consider reading the first few verses of Hebrews 12 if you want to dive deeper into this idea.

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(Originally written as a newsletter in August of 2019).