How to follow Jesus
I just watched Close Encounter of the Third Kind (again) with my children. I always find the part where the big space ship comes across and the aliens come out very exciting. It’s something about feeling that child like excitement about what it would be like to actually meet an alien.
It then got me thinking about God. How often do we feel that child like excitement about meeting God? There should be more excitement of course about meeting God than there should about meeting aliens.
Then it got me thinking that perhaps we often find it difficult to follow Jesus because we have just got so used to him being around. We have lost our excitement and anticipation that should be there when we meet Jesus. There is a gospel story about a short man climbing a tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus. This is the kind of excitement that we need to have each day.
Now I’m sure you are aware that when you get used to having things around the excitement of them tends to dwindle, so how do you keep the excitement alive?
With Jesus I think it comes from thinking about him and what he has done. This is one of the reason Christians are always banging on about the cross. Not just because of what happened but because it’s amazing and makes you feel excited about who Jesus is.
To follow Jesus we need to feel excited about being around him and learning about him. Without this excitement our faith tends to die away until it doesn’t matter much to us. Let’s try and get our excitement about Jesus back and then perhaps following him will be that much easier.
