Question

What does following Jesus mean to you?
Carina

Answer

Dear Carina,

To follow Jesus to me means to take up His cross, to deny myself and to obey His Word despite all I may think or feel. It is to sacrifice myself in the sense that no earthly comforts or fleshly reasoning is to stop me from doing His will.

To follow Him is to run counter my sinful desires which are to indulge my sinful appetite.

But it is also to trust Him for everything that I need in this life and for the life to come.  He is my righteousness, He is my ground of acceptance with the holy Father; He is my triumph over all evil;  He is my King who will supply all my needs in this journey of life;  He is my High Priest who will present me faultless at His Father's throne with
exceeding joy.  To follow Him to me is to look for no other in whom I place my trust or hope for this life and the life to come.  To follow Him also is as preacher to preach no other Name than His as the way of salvation.  As Paul, so I am convinced with all my heart, "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world."

Having said all this, I need to confess that each step or look of following Him is His gracious gift.  To Him be all the glory and the thanksgiving for it is only through His grace that I am what I am. Paul wrote words that express my own confession, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Soli Deo Gloria.

Pastor Vergunst