Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.” Matthew 16:24 (NLT)
The world is filled with great information. I’m an avid reader and I’m always learning something. I read books on leadership, management, how to develop teams and how to run organizations… but you know what? I don’t want to follow good leadership principles. I want to follow Jesus. Everything else is secondary.
Some think that following is all about what you do—feeding the poor or taking care of widows and orphans. Although those can be awesome demonstrations of Jesus’ love, that’s not what life is all about. Helping people is great, but we are to follow Jesus. It’s all about our priorities in life.
We are all called to follow Jesus. If you wanted to be more like your greatest mentor, he or she could give you a list of the principles to live your life by, and you would learn a lot from that. But what if you were offered the chance to follow them—to work with them and even live with them if you wanted to? How much more could you learn?
Jesus isn’t just giving us the Bible and telling us to learn from it—although the Bible holds principles that can help you shape an amazing life! He’s calling you to follow Him. He not only wants to show you principles; He wants to walk you through life, every step of the way, in good times and in bad.
It isn’t wrong to go after knowledge, accomplishments, healing, money, people, things or goals, but don’t forget that they are added to you as you follow Jesus. Does He come first?