The Simple Path

My bookcase has numerous books on how to be a disciple of Jesus, how to be a better disciple, how to grow as a disciple, how to make a disciple—evidence that I have been searching for the magical “missing” key that will somehow unlock everything I need to know about following Jesus…

“Then they asked Him, ‘What are we to do, so that we may habitually be doing the works of God?’

Jesus answered, ‘This is the work of God:

that you believe, adhere to, trust in, rely on, and have faith in the One whom He has sent.”

—John 6:28-29, Amplified

…The Gospels tell an age-old story of mankind either trying to over-complicate things or figure everything out with their intellect—looking for the "missing" key that will somehow unlock everything—and Jesus’ response, over and over again, is simply “believe who I Am, watch what I do, then go and do likewise.”

Go live the simple Gospel.

Simple, maybe, but also challenging—because Jesus’ words rub up against sensibilities, common sense and stubborn self-will. And yet over and over again, it has been the people who have walked out this simple yet not simplistic lifestyle before me who have influenced me more than any book or study. These simple Gospel disciples have made my heart burn within as it did with the two disciples on the Emmaus road, almost as if all within me was sensing, “here is the missing key—a Gospel that is authentic and powerful and real and practical yet entirely supernatural.”

I was reminded of such an example this week while coming across notes from a Bible study on discipleship that was exceptionally challenging to me, not in its purpose but in its approach. I felt like I was oil in water, and I wanted to walk away. But the leader never said “what’s the matter with you, don’t you get it?!” but rather came alongside in my struggle with encouragement and patience and helpfulness. “How can you and I together apply this to how you are built, the way God made you to learn?”

I really don’t remember a lot about what I got out of that discipleship study, but I came away with a lasting impression of the leader: if that’s what a disciple of Jesus looks like, I want in.

And in these complicated, confusing, information-overload times, I especially find myself being drawn again and again to that kind of following-Jesus-simply beyond Sunday morning.

One that looks like not feeling like you have to change the world by yourself but instead remembering Jesus’ exhortation to simply be salt and light, seasoning it wherever you go.

One that, like Jesus, looks like simply and always making time—and finding it is never a waste—for what and who is really important, even if just a moment, a few passing words or a simple deed.

One that, like Jesus touching the leper when no one else dared to, means simply laying your hand on someone in need of prayer, in spite of the Coronavirus….

“Why do we judge Jesus’ criterion for authentic discipleship irrelevant? Jesus said the world is going to recognize you as His by only one sign: The way you are with one another on the street every day. You are going to leave people feeling a little better or a little worse. You’re going to affirm them or deprive them, but there’ll be no neutral exchange. If we as a Christian community took seriously that the sign of our love for Jesus is our love for one another, I am convinced it would change the world. If not, we’re denying to the world the one witness Jesus asked for: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ (John 15:12).”

—Brennan Manning, “The Furious Longing of God