The Way of Jesus #1 - “I have begun following Jesus, and am depending on the Spirit of Jesus in my journey”. - January 8, 2017
It's the new year, still, but I don't want to talk about New Year's resolutions. I don't want to talk about the effort involved in adjusting our lifestyle, changing bad habits, focussing on fixing ourselves.
I don't want to talk about any of that stuff because personally, I have found that it almost never works.
I guess you could say I've been around long enough to know the limitations of my own self-discipline and my own determination.
Rather, today I’m looking for us to share in an adventure. It’s an adventure that takes the focus off ourselves.
It takes the focus off of ourselves and onto God and God’s kingdom. Off of thinking about ourselves so much and onto focussing on the well-being of others.
I’ve come to the conclusion that when we live in our own heads, when we put our energies toward trying to make ourselves happier, we never achieve that goal.
When we make the choice to not live in our own heads and instead focus on caring for others, that’s when our own lives start to come together.
Personal happiness never comes from seeking personal happiness. Joy, which is much deeper than happiness, comes from living for God and living to be a blessing to others.
So what I want to talk about today is the first message of what is going to be a seven-part series on the Way of Jesus.
On Wednesday, February 15 in this space those who are interested will gather at 6 pm for an introduction to the actual Way of Jesus platform, but over these next weeks we will look in some depth at the 7 markers of the Way of Jesus.
Those 7 markers are:
1. I have begun to follow Jesus, and am depending on the Spirit of Jesus in my journey.
2. I am being sent by Jesus to bless others and invite them to follow Him.
3. I am learning to be like Jesus in my attitudes, behaviours, character.
4. I am learning to love God and to love others.
5. I am learning the teachings of Jesus.
6. I am helping someone and someone is helping me to be a growing follower of Jesus.
7. I am participating in a community of followers of Jesus on mission to the world.
What I have experienced in my life is that transformation, real positive change, comes through following the way of Jesus, aligning ourselves with His will and His ways.
The way of Jesus is God's way for us to lead the best possible lives.
Today we are looking at the first marker of the Way of Jesus platform. It is about beginnings and it is about dependency. It’s also about honesty and humility.
1) “I have begun following Jesus, and am depending on the Spirit of Jesus in my journey”.
It makes sense that the first marker is one of beginnings, and one that recognizes the person of the Holy Spirit in the beginning.
The Holy Spirit is always around for good beginnings. The first book in the Bible, Genesis chapter 1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”.
Over all good beginnings, the Holy Spirit hovers. When faith begins blossom in a person’s life, it is the Holy Spirit Who is there, hovering, waiting, working to bring life where there is none, bringing hope where there is despair.
The Holy Spirit is the 3rd person of the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and so it’s important for us to remember that the Holy Spirit is God at work in us.
“I have begun following Jesus...”. When I was in Kitchener in June 2015 going through the training for the Way of Jesus, the President of my tribe, my denomination, Phil Delsaut, said that of the seven markers, this one was his favorite.
What's interesting is that at that point President Phil had been a Christ follower for 54 years.
So while this is the first marker of 7 that we will explore in the coming weeks,
part of the beauty of the Way of Jesus is that we have this reminder that we circle back to on a regular basis that we have really just begun. In the light of eternity, we’ve spent very little time following Jesus. 1 year? 20 years? 54 years? That’s very little time.
But also, I have found that there is a continuously renewing freshness to the life of a Christ-follower. God’s mercies are new every day.
Our goal is not to become so familiar with the gospel and the Christian life that we can consider ourselves ‘advanced’ in the faith.
Rather, our goal is to, no matter how far and deep and wide we travel with Jesus, never lose the child-like wonder and awe of sitting at his feet.
The disciples had little patience for children. There’s a great little story in the gospel of Matthew chapter 19 where people brought some little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them.
“But the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there”. Matthew 19:13-15
A little earlier in Matthew 18, when the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”, Jesus called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. “3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me”.
That is often NOT how we think. Like for the disciples, children can be thought of as ‘in-the-way’, as distractions, as energy-drainers and - “my how dare they make a ruckus in our worship service” and “if only those parents would keep those children quiet”.
God forbid that we should allow that kind of attitude in us.
You may have noticed that we have our children in the service for the times of worship. That’s because we want them to experience worship with us. They are part of the body of Christ. A Crucial part.
We call the children up and pray for the children during our services.
And for a great many years we have sought to provide both great opportunities for Christian education for our kids, but also to make sure they are and FEEL welcome in our services.
That’s not an accident. It comes out of Jesus’ teaching. We love our children and, if we are listening to Jesus, we will learn from our children.
We need to recognize that the Kingdom of heaven belongs to, as Jesus says, ‘such as these (children)’.
We need to recognize, and be reminded regularly, that - what did Jesus say - ‘we need to change and become put-together, spiritually dynamite people’?
Is that what Jesus said? No. Jesus said we need to change and become like little children.
What does this suggest? What does circling back to “I have begun following Jesus” as part of the rhythm of our lives suggest?
We need to be and remain open-hearted and trusting toward God, and toward others.
We need to deal with whatever it is that makes us feel superior than others, because it’s an illusion.
We need to have a posture of learning, a perspective of wonder and an attitude of humility.
How? How can we be responsive to God in this way? How can we be open to other people when we feel we’ve been burned by them?
Well, one way is to consider the alternative,
To live in a way that is closed off to others is to choose to live in a tiny, lonely bubble of probably anger and dismay and depression, often one that has paper-thin walls which nevertheless keep us confined in our hearts and minds.
There is a whole world out there that we are intended to be a part of, to live in as a blessing, to give and receive among the peoples of the earth.
And in Toronto perhaps more than any city on this planet, we have all the peoples of the earth represented, and welcomed, and treasured as gifts to us. That’s the Canadian way.
Everyone I’ve ever talked to who has come out of a dark night of the soul, a dark personal space, including myself
has said that part of their motivation out of their darkness and toward the light, and part of the solution to their sadness, is other people.
We need to be honest that we need others in our lives. We were never meant to do this journey of life on our own.
A child knows that he lives in relationship to others. He knows that he can not supply all of his own needs. A child knows she needs others.
But let’s look a little closer at the first marker of the Way of Jesus: “I have begun to follow Jesus, and am depending on the Spirit of Jesus in my journey”.
What does it mean, at the most basic level, to ‘begin following Jesus’? Well, following Jesus means to respond to His call. Being a follower of Jesus has to do with faith in Him.
Mark 1:16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. 19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
So at some level, everyone who is now a follower of Jesus responded to His call to follow Him.
If you are a follower of Jesus and if you were raised in the church, at some point you came to personally choose to follow Jesus. You received Him as your Lord and Saviour.
Likely your church had a way for you to express your faith at various points in Sunday school or catechism class and then at some point you were baptised or confirmed or what have you.
That was your initial response to the call of Jesus to follow Him.
If you’re a follower of Jesus and, like me, came to trust Jesus later on with little or no church background, then Jesus called you to follow Him, and you responded to that call by saying yes.
Others around you heard the call too, perhaps. Some responded yes. If you’re here, still following Jesus, you’ve chosen to continue to hear His voice calling to you to follow Him.
And notice that Jesus’ first call to the disciples was twofold. It was “come follow me”, and it was at the same time, “I will make you fishers of men”. “I will send you out to fish for people”.
The important thing to note, and you’ll be hearing more about this as we work our way through The Way of Jesus, is that your call from Jesus to follow Him includes the call to make disciples, to be a part of a people who God uses to further His purposes through His church.
It is a call to personal salvation - to living with a profound assurance that you are reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus; and it is a call to live with a purpose outside of yourself - to live with God’s purpose for your life.
Just to mention, starting in a few weeks, we are beginning a Bible Study on Tuesday nights called: “The Purpose Driven Life”. If you want to go deeper into this area, and it would be a very good idea to do that, I encourage you to attend that Bible Study at our other location, 270 Gerrard Street East.
So following Jesus means to respond to His call to follow Him. It is also like yoking another ox to a younger one – it is to learn from Jesus. Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
To follow Jesus is to learn from Him. Let me ask you - if I never crack open my Bible, if I never read and prayerfully meditate on God’s Word, am I going to learn from Jesus?
Of course the answer is “No!” In my own journey, when I came to faith in Jesus, the Bible in its entirety, and nearly all of its teachings, were completely alien to me.
I gobbled it up and learned and struggled through it for a very long time.
Why the struggle? Well, I came to the conviction early on that the Bible is the Word of God. But…my thought patterns did not conform to it.
My way of living, my way of thinking, my way of being was largely out of sync with the teachings of Jesus.
I wanted to follow Jesus, so I needed to immerse myself in His teachings, and to do so prayerfully, because I needed - I still need - to be transformed by it.
I needed to learn of Him, and as I started to do that I came to understand that He is beautiful. Nothing compares to the beauty of Jesus.
I came to see that His teachings bring real change when they are listened to and applied, because His Words are life.
I came to see that the burden I was carrying – the burden of sin and of guilt, was far too heavy for me to handle. I listened to the One calling me to rest.
I came to understand that Jesus is indeed gentle – the kind of gentle I need, and that He, even He Who is the Lord of Creation – is humble in heart. And His burden is indeed light.
Can you say with me: I have begun to follow Jesus, and am depending on the Spirit of Jesus in my journey.
In the coming weeks and, really, months and years, we will share in the adventure of learning to live with our eyes lifted up to Jesus Christ and with our hearts fixed on honouring and loving Him and on being a blessing to others in Jesus’ name.
The journey has just begun! Amen? Amen.
