Midweek Devotion; Why do we follow Jesus?

Following

Often people today follow Jesus for selfish reasons. There is a brand of theology out there called “prosperity theology” and if you’ve ever watched the religious channel you’ve seen it. It’s a theology that says if you come to Christ, He will take away all of your troubles. If you want to be healed, follow Jesus. If you want to take care of your financial difficulties, follow Jesus. If you want to meet the love of your life, follow Jesus.” Now all these are true in a sense. Jesus does heal, but not all the time. Jesus often does help you in your finances, but not always; and I do think that God had a hand in me finding Laurie. But there are no guarantees that everything will be perfect.

But if this is why you want to be a Christian, then you are being a Christian for the wrong reason. The focus of Christianity quickly becomes not how can I love and serve Christ, but what can I get from Him, and the focus of Christianity is not Christ, but our own selfish desires.

You see we need to ask the question, “What happens when we follow Christ for the wrong reasons?” Often the response to that question is, we become disappointed and leave. A woman falls in love with a man because he has stomach you could iron a shirt on, but 5 years down the road when that six pack starts to look more like a keg, she’s disappointed and the marriage quickly falls apart. When I follow Christ because He will heal my cancer, or fix my marriage, or balance my check book, and when that doesn’t happen, I quickly fall away.”

And when you follow Christ for any reason other than who He is, you will be disappointed and you will say, “It didn’t work. Let me try something else.” Now, don’t get me wrong. God does heal, He does perform miracles, He does do all these things, but these are not why you become a Christian. You became a Christian because you were convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah. You follow Him because of who He is.

And that is what true faith is. It’s when you follow God not for the blessings that come with it, but from the blessing of who He is. He has taken care of our greatest need. The bible says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When we were dead in our sins, Christ died for us. And when He rose from the grave and ascended into Heaven, and He left the door open for us to come in.