You are designed to follow Jesus. Consider this.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light.”



The “yoke” is used to keep two oxen working together. If one goes off in a different direction, the plowing doesn’t work. The stronger ox works with the weaker. The purpose of the yoke is to keep the direction and the effort in harmony.

When you connect with Jesus and follow him, you are “yoked” to him. You never face life alone. Being yoked, you don’t remain passive. You work with him.

Dallas Willard says it this way:

“Jesus said, ‘Without me, you can do nothing.’ He could just as easily said, ‘If you do nothing, it will certainly be without me.’”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an influential teacher last century. He wrote an excellent book titled The Cost of Discipleship. In it he laid out the problem of focusing on grace simply as forgiveness. Bonhoeffer called into question receiving grace with no intention of following Jesus. He called this grace, “cheap grace.” He wrote of how difficult it is to really follow Christ.

Dallas Willard also stresses that grace is more than forgiveness of sin. But he talks about discipleship in a different way. He talks about the cost of not being a disciple. In other words, the difficult life is when you are not following the ways of Jesus. Think about it.

If you are consciously or subconsciously following other principles or values than those of Jesus, you are following a way of life you weren’t designed for. God created you to follow Jesus. It would be like taking a PC and installing an Apple operating system. You were created for Windows and you are trying to work through an OS life.

No, in a way, the Christian life is meant to be easy. When you intend to follow the teachings of Jesus and you follow through, you are operating exactly how you are designed. Smooth.

Time out from Dallas Willard teachings today. October 2nd is our boys’ birthday. Greg and David are 13 today. Nancy and I officially enter the realm of raising teenagers, as we now have three. Let me say a few words about our young men.

Greg has a gentle heart and a playful spirit. What I remember most of his childhood is even as a little toddler, he didn’t like to hold my hand. He always wanted to charge ahead. Even today, nothing seems to phase him. One thing that warms my heart is whenever he sees me coming, it delights him to see me. Unless he knows he is going to get yelled at.

David is a deep and curious soul. What I remember most of his childhood is his connection to God at such an early age. Once at around age 4 he woke from a dream and said God told him to take milk and lemon juice when you are sick. One name we had for him was, “Healer,” as he would pray for your healing when necessary. What warms my heart about David is the admiration he has for me as his father. He makes being a good dad a pleasure.

Happy Birthday, my fine young men. May you continue to discover what Jesus has ahead for you.

Discipleship is being a student Jesus. Learning from him and following up with what you have learned. So, how can the vast majority of Christians trust in Jesus, but not intend to actually follow him? I don’t think this is a conscious decision. It is almost a given. How did we get here?

The main influence of non-discipleship Christianity is “Sunday morning thinking.” Most Christians believe that attendance is discipleship. “I go to church” is the equivalent of “I am a disciple of Jesus.” They view attending worship as the sum of Christian life instead of being a time for worship in community in the midst of a Christian life. Let’s be honest. Sunday morning worship services alone don’t build up apprentices of Jesus.

When we invite someone who is not a Christian to a worship service, this is a good thing. This is where most potential Christians connect. But, what we want to keep in mind always is we are not simply inviting someone to church, we are inviting them into a life. So, how can we best work this out? Stay tuned.

In Luther’s day (1500’s) the main challenge for God’s people is thinking they have to do a long list of things in order to deserve God’s favor. There are pilgrimages to different cities in order to look at relics. In other words, you would get forgiveness points, as it were, for visiting museums with things like hairs from the beard of John the Baptist, or Peter’s toenail or whatever. Everyone is trying to earn God’s love.

So Luther placed a strong emphasis on God’s underserved favor for us. Grace. It is not what you do that is important; it is what Jesus has already done. This is a wonderful correction for trying to earn the love of God or buy it.

But this isn’t really our challenge today. Trying to earn God’s favor. O, there is still plenty of that going around, but the real challenge today is actually intending to follow Jesus. To be obedient to his teachings. An easy test of how far we have to go is to measure your emotional response when I say these two words.

“Love.”

“Obey.”

How did you feel when you read each of these words? Warm and fuzzy with the first? “Yuck” with the second? Now you see how far we have to go. Love is a beautiful thing. Obedience is a beautiful thing. To obey is simply to respond to God’s love by following the teachings of Jesus so that you respond more and more like Jesus would respond if he were you in any given situation.

The greatest challenge of the church today is to say you love Jesus, you trust in him, but you really have no intention of following him. That thought never even crossed your mind.

Greg Koukl has a saying, “Never read a bible verse.” The verses of the Bible are to be in context. They are addressing situations. One of the biggest challenges for the church today is the reading of only one Bible verse out of its context.

Christians today think that all that is necessary is to accept Jesus as your personal Savior and then… What? Then what? You see too often, the church has a plan to reach potential Christians, but once they are reached there is no clear plan. It sounds like:

“You are saved and now you wait to die so you can go to heaven.”

It’s true. When you are saved you do get to go to heaven. But salvation is so much more than that. Dallas Willard talks about salvation as being involved through Jesus with what God is doing. That’s now, as well as heaven. So, if we are to work with God for the rest of our lives through eternity, then where did we get the idea that we don’t do anything except accept?

It goes back to one Bible verse. Martin Luther was writing against a corrupt church that was selling forgiveness of sins on pieces of paper. If you bought it you were forgiven. There were other ways the church was promoting doing stuff to get in good with God. Luther used a bible verse to say, “No!”

Ephesians 2:8 (NLT)

God saved you by his special favor when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

Saved by grace, as it were. Revolutionized the church. But the message soon became:

“Saved by grace? You don’t have to do anything!”

And so, in many ways, this is the legacy we are left with. Now, to be fair with Luther, he read the verse in context. He said we do good works as a response of thanks for what God did through Jesus by saving us. Luther didn’t just read one bible verse. Read more.

Ephes. 2:9-10 (NLT)

Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. [10] For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

We are saved to make it possible to do good things as much as we are saved to avoid hell and live in heaven. I will expand on that thought tomorrow.

There is a real quick answer to the question, “Why do we need Jesus?” To have our sins forgiven. The Bible says we can’t be with God for eternity unless we are pure (Habakkuk 1:13). We are made pure when we trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus being for us personally. When we are connected with the forgiveness of Jesus we live with him forever. We call this forgiveness, “Grace.” It is given to us as a gift from God. We can’t earn it in any way through our human efforts. But that is not all that grace is.

“Even if you did not sin you would need grace.” (Dallas Willard)

In our lives now, we need God’s power to do the things we cannot do on our own effort. To live the abundant life now and in our eternal future, grace provides fuel for living, not just forgiveness. Forgiveness is important, but grace is so much more. Grace is necessary to have access to the power of God in order to fulfill our destiny in his plans. Our destiny is this:

“To live life as Jesus would live it if he were I in any given situation.” (DW)

We have a big church in a wealthy area of town up in the hills overlooking the Westside on one side and the Valley on the other. Well, the pastor said recently they had a problem with their parking lot at night. There would be cars parked there at all hours. He got some cops to go out there with him and here is what they found.

Sex Disneyland. The people were parking in the lot and then they were shuttled by numerous tinted window Escalades. Destination? A couple of local mansions where they were having sex parties. Couples and single women only. They would come anonymously, jump into the waiting vehicles, go at it for a few hours with whoever doing whatever, and then return to the church parking lot, hop in their cars and go home.

My friend Mark said the strangest thing was who these people were. They looked like they lived in the area. Typical people you would meet at the mall or Saturday morning AYSO games. Except they were being filmed for cheap instant porno DVD’s the night before.

Now the audacity of using a church parking lot for Sodom and Gomorrah might have gone too far. I mean, come on. But, the fact that it happened is all too understandable. We live in the porno capital of the world. DVD’s, video’s, and internet porn is headquartered in various locations throughout a ten mile radius of where I am posting this. So, too, the filming. It’s done in the homes and backyards of houses I drive by every day.

But you wouldn’t know it. The Valley’s best kept secret. Like evil often does, it blends in nicely. So, what can I say? It’s sick. It’s real. And if God decides it’s time for sulfur from the sky again ala S and G, the original, then I am going to be right in the middle. I’m sharing my faith as fast as I can, but look what we are up against? Oh well, I’ll stick with Jesus and see where he takes me for a ride.