I did NOT sign up for THIS!!

 "I did NOT sign up for this"

I have heard these words a lot lately.  My husband is on the board of Paideia.  We are going through a very difficult time right now.  Meetings after meetings after meetings that are HOURS long and seem to only last in an impasse.  He and the other board members are exhausted and utterly spent.  They serve and give and stay up really really late listening, discussing, praying, etc.  But there comes a point and I know my Tim is at that point and he is saying on the regular, "I didn't sign up for this!"

As I have been walking through this with him, I am reflecting on what I thought I 'signed up for' when I became a Christian.  I said, YES, to serving Jesus.  I said and sang, "I have decided to follow Jesus" 

Following Jesus.  

Yes, I am a Jesus follower.  

Or am I...

just a Jesus admirer?

You see I am discovering there is a big difference between a Jesus admirer and  Jesus follower.  A Jesus Admirer stands back a ways and admires Jesus and His teachings and how He served and even how He sacrificially died.  

Aaaand that. is. it.

A Jesus follower actually follows Him.  In other words, a follower imitates the Master's every move, action, and intentions.  A follower has the same mindset as the Master.  So do you know what it means to actually follow Jesus?

Before I go any further, I once asked my youngest child, "Why did Jesus come to earth in the first place?"

He confidently said, "To die for my sins and the sins of the world"

That was spoken by a ten year old in the place of his ten-year-old-walk with Jesus.  I love that he knows this, but what he said isn't the whole of why Jesus came.  

Here's what Jesus Himself said,

"For I have come down from heaven, not do do my own will but the will of him who sent me." John 6:38

Jesus was a sent one.  He was himself a follower.  Yes, it is "the Will of the Father that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day" v 40 so my little boy was right that the will of the Father included "Jesus' dying for sins", But the whole truth is that Jesus came to do the will of the Father.  So after a while as Jesus was walking around the earth and healing the sick, but getting bombarded with crowds and Pharisees etc did He ever say, "I did NOT sign up for this!"

I wonder.

Paul the apostle writes in Philippians 2

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."  

Being a Jesus follower means having the same obedient and serving mind as Jesus.  Being an imitator of Jesus means imitating him by setting aside my own agenda, emptying myself and serving others to the point where it really, really hurts.  

Being a Jesus admirer means getting all dressed up to look nice to go to a big building on a Sunday morning and hearing a sermon about Jesus and admiring how great he is.  

But to give and serve like Him?  To deny my self like Him? To imitate Him and to follow Him truly?

Did I sign up for this?

Yes.  Yes I did.  

Is it worth it? Because this following Jesus is hard.  It stings and it hurts and we are exhausted.  And there is another meeting and there is another angry parent email to read and there are more meetings and there are more sleep deprived nights and there is more.....

I guess I could renounce my choice to follow Jesus.  I could deny that I know Him.  It's been done before.  

Oh Jesus, help me.  I ask You as a desperate human.  Will you help me follow YOU? No matter what.  I just have to believe that I will join with You as a fellow heir in the grace of life that I will see Your glory in the land of the living.  If I don't follow You, then where else will I go?  What is better than following Jesus? What has greater reward than following Christ? 

Phil2:9 Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  

"For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will Raise him up on the last day"

Sigh, Okay Lord.  I signed up to follow You and follow You I will.  Even when it is dark and annoying and long and cumbersome and ultimately fatal.  The death of my flesh.  

I believe in You.  I believe that as I look to You, I will be raised up with You on the last day.

Is there anything better.