In this series of six messages we’re exploring a simple-to-understand path to becoming the people God wants us to be. We began last week at — where else? — the beginning of this spiritual journey. We focused on ACCEPTANCE: in Meeting Christ we find acceptance. He’s full of grace and mercy. We need His forgiveness, which He wants to offer us. We need Him as Savior.

Today we'll focus on CALLING: in Following Christ we experience the profound truth that we have a supreme calling from God. He is to be Lord: the one in charge of our lives.

Next Sunday we'll look at DISCOVERY: in Learning from Christ we discover the essential truths that God wants us to know. We become teachable.

The following Sunday we'll look at TRANSFORMATION: in Becoming like Christ we become who we were meant to be. In this spiritual journey we must be willing to move from where we are to where we should be.

The next Sunday we'll look at INFLUENCE: in Serving with Christ we become the effective, productive people He wants us to be. He seeks to do His good through us!

Let's begin our time of reflecting on Following Christ. What does it mean to live a called life?

THE CALL TO FOLLOW CHRIST
Did you know that you have a calling? Not only did God know before He brought the universe into existence that you would exist now, He knew who He wanted you to be and what He wanted you to do! You have a calling placed on your life!

If you study the lives of Jesus' original disciples, you’ll see that they were called. Jesus took the business of calling them so seriously that He stayed up all night praying before He called them the next day: “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:” (Luke 6:12-13). The gospel writer Luke recorded five incidents when Jesus said to someone, “Follow me.” (Luke 5:27, 9:23, 9:59, 14:27, 18:22)

Jesus extends the same call to us. The primary emphasis of our calling in life is to follow Jesus Christ. Following someone means that you can't go where you want to go; you go where the one you're following wants to go. “Follow me,” someone says to us when we don't know how to get to a certain destination. We follow the other person's car closely, trying to get through on the same green traffic lights that he gets through, turning left or right when he does. We don't go where we want to go; we go where our friend is going.

Following Jesus means that we seek to live His way instead of following our own whims and desires. This is the way of discipleship. We decide to live exclusively for Him: not for ourselves, not for others, and not for any other cause.

There used to be a popular bumper sticker that read, “God is my co-pilot.” I’m sure that it was dreamed up by someone with good intentions. However, more and more people have come to realize that it should read, “I am God's co-pilot!” Being a Christian is more than inviting the Lord into our lives so that we can have His help and benefit, though He offers that, too. Being Christians means that we accept His invitation to follow Him, fulfilling His call upon our lives. He should have lordship over our lives. We’re supposed to live with the attitude that Jesus Himself had in relationship to His Heavenly Father, which was expressed in His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. It should be our prayer to Jesus even as it was His prayer to the Father: “yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

THE GRATITUDE OF FOLLOWING CHRIST
One of the best motivations for doing anything is gratitude. We can do something out of a sense of obligation or duty, under threat, or for payment. Doing something out of a sense of gratitude, however, is one of the most powerful — and certainly pleasant — reasons to be motivated.

One of the primary reasons for following Christ is gratitude to Him. There was a time early in His relationship with four of His twelve disciples when He went out in one of their fishing boats with them. It was Jesus' suggestion to go out, though it was not by a professional fisherman's estimation the best time to fish. Miraculously, the disciples' net was filled with fish! How did the disciples respond to Jesus' gracious, miraculous acting in their lives? “So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.” (Luke 5:11) It was at least partly out of gratitude that those four men followed Him.

We've identified the first step of our journey toward spiritual maturity in Christ as ACCEPTANCE. In Meeting Christ we find Him to be full of grace and mercy and eagerly willing to forgive us, accepting us as He finds us! Gratitude should well up within us when we come to realize this profound truth. Why would we not want to follow Him after all He's done for us by loving us and forgiving us?

The apostle Paul wrote, “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.” (2 Corinthians 5:15) If He died for me, I should live for Him out of the deepest, most profound sense of gratitude!

The apostle John, one of the twelve disciples who spent three years following Jesus, later wrote, “This is love for God: to obey his commands.” (1 John 5:3) How can you love someone and not want to do what would please that person? Our obedience to Jesus should be due to the fact that we really love Him. Because we love Him, we should want to show Him our love by wanting to please Him and serve Him.

The apostle Paul put it this way: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — . . .” (Romans 12:1) In view of the mercy, acceptance, forgiveness, and love we experience in Meeting Christ, we should sacrifice living our way and instead live Christ's way, thus pleasing Him! Follow Him out of gratitude for all you mean to Him and all that He's done for you!

THE COST OF FOLLOWING CHRIST
Following Jesus doesn’t come without a price! Establishing a relationship with Christ costs us nothing, because He paid the price for our free gift of forgiveness. However, living a life of gratitude toward Him will cost us something.

Jesus put the cost of our call in the most vivid image possible during His own time. Executions were very public then. The Romans made a person carry the crossbeam of his own cross and then hung the person on his cross until he was dead. When Jesus spoke the following words about His own death on a cross, His listeners didn’t know that He would be crucified. However, they certainly understood the level of cost involved in following Him: “Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'” (Luke 9:23) Later Jesus stated, “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:27)

The great German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in a Nazi concentration camp by hanging for being obedient to Christ's call on his life. Amazingly, he had written a book which is now a Christian classic called The Cost of Discipleship. In it he stated, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” (p. 99)

This means that we don't say “It's my life,” because it's not: it's Christ's. We don't say “It's my money,” because it's not: it's Christ's. We don't say “I've have to look out for myself first,” because we've made a commitment to look out for Christ’s best interests first. This is very different from the way we normally look at life!

Jesus stands in stark contrast to the world around us, like light in darkness. When we decide to follow Him we’ll find that we, too, must live in contrast to the world, like light in darkness. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) The apostle Paul admonished us, “For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the world. Live as children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8)

The fallen world, however, isn’t just around us; it’s in us, too! This is why we must practice self-denial. As the apostle Paul put it, it’s dying to self: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) Following Christ means that we won’t be able to follow our own desires or the ways of the world. That’s the price we must pay for following Him.

THE BENEFITS OF FOLLOWING CHRIST
Whenever we talk about what's involved in pursuing a certain course of action, we want to know the costs and benefits. We've considered some of the costs of following Christ; what about the benefits?

Jesus put it this way: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24a) Life is sort of like grasping a handful of sand: the tighter you grasp it, the more quickly it seems to flow from your grasp. Ironically, people who try to hold on to their own lives — who try to control things themselves and try to look out for their own best interests first — end up on the short end of things. Jesus, in essence, is saying that when we look out for Him first, He looks out for us. When we give our lives to Him, He gives us our lives back — and in fact we get back more than we give.

Here's an object lesson I've used in the past. I take a container, an assortment of small rocks, and one larger rock. First I pour all of the small rocks into the container and then I try to fit the large rock in — but it doesn't fit because there's not enough room for it. Then I dump out all the rocks and start over again. This time I put in the big rock FIRST and then I pour in the smaller rocks. Amazingly, all the rocks fit — and most important, the big rock is in there, too! My point is that when you start with all of the other aspects of life, focusing on them first and giving them most of your time and effort, there's very little room for Christ. However, if you put Christ first in your life, there will be room for everything that there should be room for!

Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) Christ loves us and wants the best for us. Yielding our lives to His control is ultimately not a sacrifice, because He has our best interests at heart.

When we take a commercial flight we don't insist on flying the plane ourselves, though we paid a hefty price for the ticket! We leave the complex flying of the aircraft to the pilot. When we give control to him we can fly safely, because he knows how to fly the plane and we don't. God has made us and our lives, and He knows far better than we do how our lives should be lived! That’s why we should give control to Him.

THIS NEW PERSPECTIVE OF FOLLOWING CHRIST
Life takes on a whole new perspective when you believe that you’re called! Seeing your life as a calling from God is the best way to live. Life is best when you live for something bigger than yourself — and there’s nothing bigger than God! The apostle Paul described this new perspective on how to live: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Imagine a child playing on a playground, out on the little league field, or on stage at a music or dance recital with his parents watching. As the child plays or performs, he often glances toward his watching parents. How different it would be, how much less meaningful and enjoyable for the child, if the parents weren’t there! In a real sense the child is doing whatever he’s doing for his parents’ benefit. This is the perspective we should have toward life: we’re “playing” our lives to an audience of One! We want to live to please Him.

Sometimes “practicing the presence” of God means that we know He's watching when we're tempted to live in a way that would displease Him. This awareness of His watchful eye is good! It’s often for the better that we don't do things the way our passions, appetites, and fallen nature would lead us. We think it’s a big price to pay to do what He wants — or to not do what He doesn't want us to do — but ultimately it’s more costly to do things our way instead of His way!

Following Christ is a daily, ongoing experience. It should color the way we view everything and do everything.

In the Toledo Blade newspaper there's a regular column in which various people are asked what book they're reading. Jim Spengler, the director of the Metroparks of Toledo, was recently featured in the column. He said that he was reading When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, by John Ortberg. He described how Ortberg used the example of the game of Monopoly and how, when the game is over, all the pieces, including the properties and money, are put back into the box. Spengler said, “This is contrasted with the game of life, where we often misplace our values on property, possessions, and positions. The most important point of life is how you better the lives of those around you and your relationship with God.” (The Blade, January 6, 2008)

Jesus Christ invented the game called LIFE. We’re wise if we follow His way of playing the game!

We experience God's gift of acceptance and forgiveness when we’re truly open to Meeting Christ. However, we can't stop at meeting Him; we must accept His call to follow Him!