A Quote by Garrison Keillor
Give up your good 'Christian' life and follow Jesus
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One of the commonest causes of failure in Christian life is found in the attempt to follow some good man whom we greatly admire. No man and no woman, no matter how good, can be safely followed. If we follow any man or woman, we are bound to go astray. There has been but one absolutely perfect Man on this earth-the Man Christ Jesus. If we try to follow any other man we are surer to imitate his faults than his excellencies. Look to Jesus and Jesus only as your Guide.
To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that are often unsaid but always derivative from Jesus, formed by the influence of Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we can't separate what Jesus is saying from what Jesus is doing and the way that he is doing it. To follow Jesus is as much, or maybe even more, about feet as it is about ears and eyes" (The Way of Jesus, Eugene H. Peterson, 22).
If you want to follow Jesus because He'll fix your marriage, if you want to follow Jesus because He'll give you a better life, that's idolatry. Follow Christ for the sake of Christ; He is worthy!
Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. Its that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it.
You can keep your own religion - Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism - you just need to add Jesus to the equation. Then you become complete. You become a Buddhist with Jesus, a Hindu with Jesus, a Muslim with Jesus and so on. You can throw out the term Christianity and still be a follower of Jesus. In fact, you can throw out the term Christian too. In some countries, you could be persecuted for calling yourself a Christian, and there is no need for that. Just ask Jesus into your heart, you don't have to identify yourself as a Christian.
The Christian who desires to follow Jesus carrying his cross must bear in mind that the name "Christian" means "learner or imitator of Christ" and that if he wishes to bear that noble title worthily he must above all do as Christ charges us in the Gospel: We must oppose or deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow him.
The journey begins, though, with understanding what it means to be a christian. To say you believe in Jesus apart from conversion in your life completely misses the essence of what it means to follow him. Do not be deceived.
There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything.
When we give help to the poor, we are not doing the work of aid agencies 'in a Christian way'. Those are good, it is a decent thing to do - aid work is good and quite human - but it is not Christian poverty, which St. Paul desires of us and preaches to us. Christian poverty is that I give of my own, and not of that which is left over - I give even that, which I need for myself, to the poor person, because I know that he enriches me. Why does the poor person enrich me? Because Jesus Himself told us that He is in the poor person.
Unfortunately, the simplest things - such as thinking for myself, creating my own reality and being whatever the hell I want to be each day of my life - are a sin. To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reigns of your life and let some unseen force do it for you.
Jesus didn't mean this as a sweeping command for everyone who has a lot of money. Jesus meant this for any of us who wallow in whatever abundance we have. I imagine Jesus looked straight into this young man's soul and said, 'I want you to give up the one thing you crave more than me. Then come, follow me.'
A charity which knows only how to give money is not yet Christian love. You will be free of guilt only when you also give your time, your energy, and your resourcefulness to help end such abuses for good, and when you allow nothing that lies hidden in the storehouse of your Christian religion to remain unused against the cancer that is destroying the vitality of our society in such alarming ways.
Jesus didn't say that if you wanted to follow Him you could do it in a lukewarm manner. He said, 'Take up your cross and follow Me.'
It is good to enjoy your life, follow your passion, do things that give you joy.
Jesus offered a single incentive to follow himto summarize his selling point: 'Follow me, and you might be happy-or you might not. Follow me, and you might be empowered-or you might not. Follow me, and you might have more friends-or you might not. Follow me, and you might have the answers-or you might not. Follow me, and you might be better off-or you might not. If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless. Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have: you will learn to love well.'
The liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually we become what we say we are - followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God
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