Following Jesus?
Are you following Jesus? Are you his disciple? Are you abiding in him as he abides in you? Have you been crucified with Christ? Is it no longer you who lives but Christ who lives in you?
I’ve been asking myself these (and other) difficult questions. Why the questions and thoughts? Well, they’ve been spurred on by the writing of Michael Spencer.
For example, I read the following in Mere Churchianity by Michael Spencer:
“I’m looking for a spiritual experience that looks like, feels like, sounds like, lives like, loves like, and acts like Jesus of Nazareth.”
Before you get “hung up” on Spencer’s term “spiritual experience,” please pay attention to what he’s saying.
If my life does not look more and more like Jesus’ life, then I am not abiding in him. If I am not doing more and more things like Jesus did (as attested in the Gospels), then I am not following him (i.e., being his disciple). If I am not spending time with the kind of people that Jesus spent time with, then he is not living his life in me.
The necessity of the comparison seems obvious. We’re giving a glimpse into the life of Christ not once, not twice, but from four different perspective.
We have a way to compare our life to the life of Christ. But, I don’t like the comparison.