Come Follow Me: Why Who You Follow Determines Who You Become
This post is part of Blackbird Mission’s 2025 Summer of Sermons series, featuring Daron Earlewine’s most impactful church messages.
Bottom line up front: Jesus offers the most radical invitation in history—not to believe information about him, but to actually follow him, be with him, become like him, and do what he did. But here’s the kicker: most of us are following everyone except the one person actually worthy of our lives.
Let’s be honest—we live in a culture obsessed with following. Your Instagram feed is probably packed with 2,000+ people you don’t even know, yet somehow they’re shaping your thoughts, dreams, and daily decisions. You mindlessly scroll through their highlight reels while ignoring your spouse, kids, and the actual life happening right in front of you. Sound familiar?
In his powerful message “Come Follow Me,” Daron Earlewine cuts straight to the heart of our modern dilemma: We’re incredibly good at following people, but terrible at choosing who’s actually worthy of our lives.
The Invitation That Changes Everything
Jesus extends the simplest yet most profound invitation in human history: “Come follow me.” Not “believe the right information about me” or “raise your hand if you agree with my theology.” Just come. Follow. Be with me.
This isn’t about trying harder to be a “good Christian”—a word that appears only three times in the New Testament. The word “disciple” appears over 200 times. Jesus came to make followers, not Christians.
Here’s what that looks like practically:
- Be with Jesus: Spend intentional time with him daily, not just consuming information about him
- Become like Jesus: Allow his character to transform yours through his Holy Spirit
- Do what Jesus did: Love enemies, heal broken people, bring hope to the hopeless
As Dallas Willard said, “The greatest issue facing the world today is whether those who are identified as Christians will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ—steadily learning from him how to live the life of the kingdom of the heavens into every corner of human existence.”
Your Invitation Awaits
We get one life. One shot at becoming who we were created to be. The question isn’t whether you’ll follow someone—you’re already following people every day. The question is whether the people you’re following are worthy of your one precious life.
Jesus stands with the simplest, most personal invitation in history: “Come follow me.” Not because you’ve earned it or applied successfully, but because he’s choosing you. Right now. Today.
What will your answer be?
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To connect or learn more about joining a Rogue Collective band, visit RogueCollectiveCoaching.com or email me directly at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
What if following Jesus wasn’t about trying to be a “good Christian” but about actually becoming like Him? In this thought-provoking sermon, Daron unpacks the difference between Western cultural Christianity and Jesus’ original call to discipleship. It’s not about information or performance—it’s about transformation through proximity, imitation, and obedience.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ You become what you follow—so choose wisely
⚡️ Jesus doesn’t just want your belief; He wants your life
⚡️ Discipleship means being with, becoming like, and doing what Jesus did
⚡️ Culture tells us who to follow—Jesus tells us who we can become
⚡️ This life isn’t about getting into heaven; it’s about bringing heaven to earth
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “Jesus didn’t come to make Christians—He came to make disciples.”
⚡️ “You’re being shaped by your feed more than your faith.”
⚡️ “This is an invitation into imitation that leads to transformation.”
⚡️ “What we follow, we become.”
⚡️ “You only get one life. Don’t waste it becoming someone you were never meant to be.”
Episode Resources:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host. And hey, one thing I love to do in the summer is shake things up a little bit, right? You got four seasons and everyone’s a little different, and I like to change things up in the summer. And that’s what we’re going to do here on the Daron Earlewine podcast.
So here’s what we got for you. You know, we do a lot of purpose development stuff whether it’s at schools, the purpose paradigm with what we’ve been doing now, and kind of communicating the future of Rogue Collective as we’re doing purpose and personal development in the marketplace. And one of the other things that I’ve been doing—well, shoot, now for like I don’t know since I was 16—is going to churches or being a part of faith communities and sharing sermons out of the Bible.
And so what we’ve done this summer is gotten maybe some of the greatest hits over the past year or so of me speaking at local churches, and we’re going to put them together. We’re going to share them with you here on the podcast. And here’s what I hope: I hope they inspire you. I hope they help you understand how much God loves you, okay? I hope they help awaken within you the fact that God is near you, right? That God is for you. And as we say every week on the podcast, that God has created you on purpose and for a purpose.
So lots of different topics that’ll be coming this summer, but hopefully just great content that’s going to inspire you. And we always love to hear from you. Very easy way for you to do that—just email me, Daron, D-A-R-O-N at daronearlewine.com. We’d love to hear what you’re learning, love to hear questions you have. Maybe there’s a topic you’d love to hear us jump into on the podcast. Please reach out—daron@daronearlewine.com—and enjoy the 2025 summer of sermons. Created on purpose and for a purpose.
I love music. I love that God has given us this gift of music. And one of the things I love about songs is somehow God has hardwired our heart, soul, and our mind and strength that music somehow weaves them all together. So as we’re going through those songs—as Amanda said, maybe new to some of you—but for me, I’ve probably played some of those songs 200 times on the drums through the years. And as they’re singing them, I’m going back to seasons and times where God showed up in my life.
And that’s, I think, one of the amazing things about serving a living God who walks with you in life. Is that those great, amazing times in life, God walks with you and you sing songs of joy. In those seasons where you’re dry and seems like your prayers can’t make it through the roof, God sings songs of comfort, encouragement with you. And in seasons where your heart is broken, God walks with you and he sings with you. He’s an amazing, amazing father, amazing God, and he gives us a soundtrack.
If you’re new to that, glad you’re here. Because what I don’t have to tell you—and you already know—is you’re going to have seasons where things are great, and you’re going to have seasons where times are dry, and you’re going to have seasons when your heart is broken. And if you don’t yet know the love of a God that would walk with you, sing with you, comfort you, encourage you, and guide you, we’re going to tell you about that God this morning.
Crazy amazing thing about this God is that he’s a God of invitation. He invites us to follow. Aren’t invitations great? Remember the first time when you were a little kid you got invited to like your first birthday party and you thought like, “Oh my gosh, like I got invited, right? Like going to have some friends, some good days.” Remember the first time that you tried out for a team or a club or something and got that invitation? Maybe it was just your name up on a wall, maybe it was an email, and you were like, “I got invited! I’m in.”
Then the stakes go up, you know? Maybe sometime in high school you actually invited that special someone be your boyfriend or girlfriend or go to prom or something. You were so scared they were going to say no, right? Whether you were inviting or you got invited, it was special. And then some of us got to a place where we actually invited someone to become our spouse. When you get invited, it’s powerful.
And Jesus has this very simple, very short, very personal invitation that he extends to everyone. And this is it: “Come follow me. Come follow me.”
So in my brain, like, it begs the question: Who am I following? Have you thought about that recently? Who am I following? And for me, the thought immediately this week went to social media. It’s probably the place in our culture that we have this language most readily available. Somehow on Instagram I’ve been able to acquire like just over 3,000 followers, which is not that many, but it’s kind of crazy, right? There’s 3,000 people that at some point were like, “I want to follow Daron Earlewine.” Now most of them don’t know me. I don’t know many of them. But there’s this connection where it’s like there’s something about that person that I want them to populate this feed that is shaping my life.
I went and looked this week, and I actually follow about 2,000 people. Most of them I don’t know at all. Some of them I wish I didn’t follow, except this one guy. He posts these awesome voice pet voiceover videos. I don’t know if you follow him—can’t remember his name—but I mean, he… I can’t take it. I’ll be just on Instagram and all of a sudden he’ll come up and he’s like voicing over like this donkey at a petting zoo talking to people, and I am crying, I’m laughing so hard. And my kids like, “What’s wrong with you?” And I’m like, “You got to come see this cat talking, right?” I love it. He’s my favorite follow.
And you have people that you follow. And what I’ve begun to realize is the connection between the things we follow and who we become. And honestly, what I’ve been noticing about our culture is that like, I think that we have made this God. And I think about all these people that we follow, and we give them our attention and we give them our time, and sometimes we even give them our money. And it’s amazing to me like the difference where Jesus comes and he says, “Come follow me.”
And our goal—and we’re going to talk about for the next month—is this idea that we really want to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, and to do what Jesus did.
And then I take a look at our culture and our lives and I go, “I wonder why we’re so anxious? I wonder why we’re so depressed? Wonder why we’re so lonely? I wonder why we’re so spiteful? Wonder why we covet other people’s stuff so much? I wonder why we’re so distracted? I wonder why we’re so lustful?” And I think it’s starting to make sense. It’s because we’re following each other and we’re not God. Like hours a day we just sit and we bow down and we worship our gods. Tell me what to think, tell me how to dress, tell me how to live. And guess what? They do.
But the question is: Am I becoming something that’s actually worthy of my life? Cuz when I follow other human beings, guess what I become like? Another human being.
The amazing thing that Jesus actually invites us into, he says this: “Here’s the deal. I want you to come and follow me because what I want to teach you how to do is how to become like me.” And he says things that are amazingly hopeful. He says things like, “I’m going to actually teach you how to become the salt and light of the earth. I’m going to teach you how to be loving and patient and kind and gentle and work with self-control in your life. I’m going to see, I’m actually let you become faith and hope and love in other people’s lives. I’m going to guide and direct you to become what human beings were created to be”—which we just spent a month talking about, didn’t we? People that are created in the image of God to reflect his love, his character, his creativity. That’s what we could become.
But I think what we do is we follow other human beings and then are surprised by the result.
Here’s a little call to action. Most of you will not do this. All of you will be somewhat offended by it. Here’s my challenge to you: Just for this series, for the next month, would you be willing to delete social media off your phone?
“How will I breathe? How will I waste hours and hours of my day every day, Daron, ignoring the things that really matter? How can I sit in the living room, Daron, and ignore my spouse for at least 30 to 45 minutes a time? How can I ignore what my kids are doing and the attention they might need as I mindlessly scroll through other human beings doing mindless things? Daron, how will I ever prepare and be exceptional at my job if I’m not wasting at least a day of work every week scrolling in my office hoping my boss doesn’t check my screen time? How can I become who I was born to be without reading how every person I follow has now become a geopolitical force of understanding of how the complexities of our societies function? Daron, how will I know who to hate, Daron, if I don’t be told by people—other human beings that I follow—who is so stupid I should have vitriolical feelings towards my neighbors?”
Well, that’s not me, Daron, really? Cuz it’s me. Because we’re following each other and becoming like each other.
So it’s just a challenge: Get it off your phone for a month. You can get on your laptop if you want, jump on a little desktop if you have one, but you’ll feel like a much worse dad than you already do if you pull a laptop out and set it in front of you and then ignore your spouse, right? I’ve tried it—doesn’t work. Go into your office and get on your computer, and after about 5 to 10 minutes you’ll be like, “I’m a loser. I got to go do something.” This is easier though. I look like I’m doing something important, right? And I’ll do this every opportunity I get when I don’t have to give my attention to anything else. And you do the same thing.
Just walk around this week and notice how many nanoseconds it takes for every human being around you when they have a moment of boredom or something they don’t have to do that they do this. I won’t ask this question: How many of you don’t even have to think about the exact place on your screen that Instagram is and your thumb just goes there automatically? That’s called addiction, friends.
Really, I’ve done it for this year so far, and it’s way better. Although I have now built an amazing farm and a lumberjack office as well on my phone, so I have not quite broke the addiction. But I’m really good at saving a wasteland and building water towers and things of this nature.
If it’s not Instagram or social, it might just be like iconic people that you want to become. This is a little bit deeper, right? But there are icons in our society that we want to become. And what’s cool—or not—is that these people become so influential in society that they only need one name, right? Like most of us need two names for people to know who we are, but when you get to godlike status, you can get one name: Elvis, Madonna, Prince, right? Then if you really get to the next level, you don’t even need a name. You can just… Well, Prince didn’t have a name for a while. He just had a symbol, right? And then there’s MJ, right? Michael Jordan’s so famous and so iconic you don’t even—he doesn’t even need a name. He can just have two letters.
And these are people that we follow and we actually say, “I kind of want to become like them. I want to dress like them. I want to walk like them. I want to talk like them.”
For me, growing up, like my first icon was this guy named Robert. He was a drummer from the band Stryper, and I wanted to be Robert Sweet so bad. I wanted to play like him. Then I discovered Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe, and I bought his drumsticks and I learned to play like him. And if I had a million dollars, I would have created a drum riser that came up out of the ground and spun around 360—and you don’t know about that, I mean, it’s something, all right?
And then I started getting more serious about this concept of following Jesus, and then I was like, “I don’t know if I keep following Tommy if I’m going to look much like Jesus.” So then I upgraded. Then I found Bono from U2—once again, so famous only needs one name. It’s not even his real name. That’s a great part—you get so iconic you can make up a name and people like still dig it.
I want to be Bono so bad through college, and I probably today I dress like him. I had sunglasses like him. I wanted to be Bono so bad that when I go sing karaoke, I always sing a U2 song and I do my best Bono impersonation, right? And I’m good at it, right? When you do a Bono thing, you got to move kind of weird, and then whenever like you sing like a kind of a powerful part, you do one of these like… right? That was good. If you guys know Bono, you know—pretty good Bono right there, right?
And then I’m so into becoming Bono like there’s this… if you watch the U2 PopMart tour in Mexico City, there’s this part where I think they’re doing “With or Without You” and Bono’s like talking—it’s kind of the chill part—and he’s like, “Bruce, turn the lights off,” right? Bruce must be the lighting tech, I don’t know, right? And then Bono goes in this whole thing and he’s like, “Mexico, thank you, Mexico. Thank you for giving us a great life, Mexico. Thank you for the burritos.”
I’ve literally done that entire speech singing karaoke in a bar before, multiple times, okay? And people have to be like, “What is this psycho doing?” Right? “He’s thanking Mexico for the burritos. He’s singing character.” But I’m not. I’m becoming Bono, right, in that bar.
Or you could be like Tay, right? She’s so iconic she just gets a nickname. But we don’t worship her, you know what I mean? Like dress like her and sing like her and get every wristband that she has and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to her concerts and then like, you know, thank and act and become like her. And we don’t get so wrapped up in worshiping and following people that just to see them literally brings us to tears.
Oh wait, yes we do.
So we don’t have an issue following anyone. We’ve got that in spades. The question that we have to ask—and we’re going to do our best to ask over the next month—is this: Are these people worthy of your life? Are the people that you follow worthy of your life? Because whether you pay attention to it or not, they are shaping and creating you in their image.
I forgot I had notes. Just so you know, there’s no chance this sermon gets done in 30 minutes. Just letting you know. That’s why you had parking problems when you came in today. Actually had somebody come in and say, “We thought maybe you were preaching because the parking lot was a disaster.” Said, “Bless you, child of God.” So if you’ve got reservations at Golden Corral, cancel them.
But what about Jesus? What about Jesus? Why is it somewhat difficult to wrap our minds around following him? And I think this might be true. I think there are certain situations in life that reveal to us our beliefs. And I’ve talked to you guys about this before. I think there are three levels of beliefs.
There’s your public belief. This is what you want people to believe you believe. So if we say, “Was Jesus the smartest, most intelligent, most brilliant, most creative person who ever lived?” you would go, “Yes,” because that’s the churchy right answer and you want people to believe that you want people to believe you believe that.
Then there’s your personal beliefs. This is what you actually think you believe.
Then there’s another level, what we would understand as our core beliefs. Most of the time we don’t know what these are, but they manifest themselves in our life. So publicly we’d say, “Yes, I want, I believe that Jesus is the source of all truth and life.” However, if we look at who we spend the most time following, and if we look at where we go for answers or wisdom in life’s most difficult things, if Jesus isn’t number one where we go, the core actual belief is we don’t think he’s actually the smartest person that ever lived.
That’s a tough one to wrestle through.
Dallas Willard says it like this: “But can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb or uninformed? Once you stop and think about it, how could he be what Christians take him to be in other respects and not be the best informed, most intelligent person of all, the smartest person who ever lived, bringing us the best information on the most important subjects?”
But when you think Jesus, do you think that? And do you believe it? If not, you’re going to struggle to follow him.
Another thing that might come up in our brain is, “Well yeah, but Daron, but he lived 2,500 years ago. Like this is 2025. We got like big time stuff. It’s, you know, crazy these days. I don’t think Jesus would understand exactly what’s happening now.” Which, if you’ve thought that, what it reveals is your core belief is that Jesus isn’t currently alive.
Never thought about it that way, Daron? But see, if Jesus is as alive today as he’s ever been—in fact, more alive—and he’s offering, “Come follow me, and I will guide you in the most difficult things of life. Not only will I guide you, I will send my actual living Holy Spirit in you to guide and to direct and to empower to do all the things you need to do to live life as it was meant to be lived.” If we actually believe he’s alive and he’s the smartest person that ever lived, it would be very easy to go, “I must follow him.”
Fair? I hope you wrestle with that this week. It’s a great thing to wrestle with. If you get to the place where you realize, “Daron’s right. I don’t think Jesus is very smart. He just says like riddles and like parables and he walks around and does stuff. How does that relate to me?” If you realize that, that’s great, because then you go, “Okay, this is where I really am. I need to grow in this.” If you realize, “I kind of always think of Jesus as like ancient and not really alive now,” that’s something that God’s trying to teach you.
One of the interesting things about Jesus is this: In ancient times when Jesus walked the earth, the way that Jewish educational systems work is there are kind of three levels of it. The first one you got into at about five, and you’d go in and you begin to memorize the Torah and learn to read and write and your basic stuff. And then at about 10, you’d upgrade to kind of what we understand as like kind of a high school, university, junior high-ish, right? Kind of like we do. And you’d grow and you would actually memorize the rest of the Old Testament. You would learn other things about life and oral tradition and how to ask good questions and you get educated in that.
Then you go to the next level after that, and it was less of a schooling and more of kind of a community of learning in that. And right in that period, the best of the best students would apply to be selected by a rabbi. Rabbi means teacher. And if you were the best of the best, a rabbi would go through the application process and say, “Come follow me.” And they would come and they would walk and they would follow this rabbi. And the goal was to be with the rabbi, right? To be like the rabbi, and then eventually to do what the rabbi did.
And in that time, a blessing they would give people is they would say, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi,” meaning may you follow so closely behind him that the dust that comes off his sandals would cover you.
Jesus shows up and he completely flips the script on everyone. Because where they had to apply and be selected, Jesus comes along and he says this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son—me—that whosoever believes can come and follow me.” Jesus says, “This is not about applying and getting selected. What I’m saying is I am choosing. Everyone is invited to come and follow me.”
That is really good news for people like you and me, correct? We are all invited to follow.
Now the interesting thing about this as we go into it a little deeper is dealing with what we’re becoming and what we think that looks like, okay? So this is a challenge in the way that our culture has treated this thing we call Christianity. Because Jesus’s idea was this: “Come follow me,” okay? “And be with me”—meaning spend a lot of time with me—”so that you can become like me.” What does that mean? That means my character will become your character. You will become like Jesus. You will become patient and kind and gentle, right? You’ll be full of faith and hope and love. You will heal people, right? You will do and be like Jesus. And then eventually you’ll do the things that Jesus did. That was the plan. That was what it looked like. And they called that discipleship or apprenticeship: being with, becoming like, and then doing what they did.
Now the tough part in our culture that we’ve grown up in is we’ve had different expectations. And to be fair, people like me have made it difficult to understand it because we’ve taught it in such a way that’s created the culture that we have. And I don’t think it’s the culture that Jesus intended.
Like when Jesus is talking about this in Luke 6, he says, “So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord’ when you don’t do what I say?” Right? Because the intention was be with me and then be like me, meaning I tell you to do things and you do them because you’re my disciple.
He says, “I’ll show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. It’s like a person building a house who digs deep and lays a foundation on solid rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against the house, it stands firm because it is well built. But anyone who hears and does not obey is like a person who builds a house right on the ground without a foundation. And when the floods sweep down against that house, it will collapse into a heap of ruins.”
Something to ponder this week: When you look at our society, does it look like a house well-built or does it look like a heap of ruins? I’m going to go with it leans towards heap of ruins. Meaning what Jesus is saying is, “Here’s what you’re getting: You’re not following me and you’re not actually trying to be like me. Therefore, you’re building your life on a foundation that will betray you and your family and your communities. But there is an amazing option if you would actually want to follow me—to be with me because I’m alive—and become like me because I will send my Holy Spirit inside of you to actually give you the desire and the power to do so. And then if you would join me to start doing what I do.”
But we get kind of confused on this because here’s—Jesus’s idea was an invitation that leads to imitation, okay? An invitation into imitation that leads to transformation.
What we’ve done in Western American Christianity is we’ve gone with, we think the invitation is into information, right? Who’s the most mature Christian you know? You would go, “The person who knows the most about the Bible.” You have a lot of information, therefore you must be a good Christian. No, you’re just a person with a lot of information. I’ve grown up my whole life around people that know a lot about the Bible and don’t look anything like Jesus. How about you?
So what happens is in our culture we go, “Okay, here’s what I’m doing is I’m going to get information.” And when I think that the goal is this accumulation of more information, what I do is I become a student and a spectator. I’m here to learn information and basically be entertained. So I’m a student and a consumer.
That’s what we have in Western American Christianity. That’s how most churches build big churches. You get someone like me or Ken or Karine or somebody that speaks and gives people information, and you put on a good show and entertain people. And then people come to sit and gain information and be entertained. And the majority of church growth in America is not people coming to faith and following Jesus. It’s people who get bored of the show they were at and the information they were getting, and they go to the church down the street that has better entertainment and gives the information in a more compelling way.
Some of you are here because your last church got too boring. It’s just true. You didn’t come here because the Holy Spirit told you, “Go to Mercy Road Northeast.” It’s just the information got too boring at the other church, and you know we had a better show.
It’s how we build churches in America: Get a good talker, put on a good show. And then we look at the Western American church and people go, “I don’t know that that looks like Jesus.” You want to know why? Because we never told anybody that this was about an invitation to imitation. And we told people, “Come raise your hand if you believe the right information and you’re in,” which is the next level of it.
We have an idea that basically what we’re looking for—and unfortunately people like me have made you believe this is what Jesus is actually looking for—is for you to believe the right information so you can get admittance. Invitation to admittance, not invitation to imitation.
What do I mean by that? Well, it means I give you the information about Jesus and you go, “I agree with that information,” and I hand you—or Jesus hands you—a golden ticket to heaven. So I’m trying to get into heaven. “So do you believe this? I’ll count to three and snap”—because that’s what guys like me do—”and you raise your hand at the end of the service cuz you believe the information I gave you, and then we pray a prayer and you get a ticket to heaven and then you leave.”
“Yes?” A lot of times, yes. And then church people like me go, “I really feel good because we had six people raise their hand.” The problem is Jesus didn’t do that. If you look at Jesus, he didn’t walk up to people and go, “Hey, do you believe this information about me? Raise your hand right now. Okay, I got to go, bye. Like I’m just here to give you golden tickets to heaven.” That’s not what he said.
I know this sermon’s uncomfortable. You know how many times Jesus said—or the Bible says “Christian”? How many times “Christian” is mentioned in the New Testament? How many? Guess?
“Sorry, what’d you say? No, I don’t want to… oh no.” Three. The word “Christian” is used three times in the New Testament. So Jesus was not coming to make Christians.
The word “disciple” used over 200 times. So what we have to get our minds around is if you’ve been spending your life trying to be a good Christian, that’s not the goal. The goal is to spend your life becoming like Jesus—to be a follower, a disciple, an apprentice of Jesus, where the goal of my life is to be with Jesus so I become like Jesus and do what Jesus did.
If you’re here this morning, you go, “No one ever told me that, Daron. I am sorry.” That’s why we’re doing this series. Because if we don’t have the intention to actually go to where Jesus wants us to go, we’re going to find ourselves somewhere else. And it’s probably going to be somewhere else that is being given to us by the conglomeration of who we follow, things we read, things we watch, things we listen to, the five people we spend the most time with, our political chosen party, whatever it is. We start to look like them instead of looking like Jesus.
And here’s the tough part for us that maybe grew up around this and we call ourselves Christians: is that what happens is when we get serious or closer to actually following him, usually the cost of following him gets too high.
Jesus is talking to a guy—and we’re in here like Luke or John—Matthew, we’re in the Gospels, Matthew 19. He comes to Jesus and he says, “Hey Jesus, what do I got to do to get eternal life?” What’s he asking? “How do I get a ticket? How do I get admitted? How do I get in?”
And Jesus says to him, “Well, follow the commandments.” And he says, “Oh, I’ve done those.” Jesus lists off these commandments—they’re a handful of the ten commandments—but he leaves off one of the horizontal relational commandments, which is “do not covet,” cuz Jesus knows that this man has a lot of possessions. And even more than that, Jesus knows that this man’s possessions have him.
And so he says, “Okay, here’s the deal: Take all you own, sell it, give the money to the poor, and you’ll have treasures in heaven. And then come and follow me.”
If you know the story, that says, “The man went away sad because he had great wealth.”
And I can read the story and condemn this guy: “Oh, that’s how rich people are.” But you know what I’m experiencing in my life? The longer I follow Jesus, he keeps saying things like, “Hey, if you’ve noticed the way you’re loving people, that’s not how I love people. So if you’re going to follow me, I need you to change that.”
And that’s tough because I don’t know about you, but have you ever noticed how fun it is to hate your enemies? Yeah, I do, because we’re on Facebook together. No, Daron, it’s fun cuz I follow these people on Facebook and somehow they became geopolitical experts on everything that ever happens in the world last week. And what they can do is instead of posting cat videos, now they tell me who to hate. And I love that cuz it feels really good to hate other people. But I’m a Christian.
But Jesus said we got to love our enemies. We got to bless those who curse us. And that’s hard.
So the question for all of us is—and I’m not yelling at you, okay? I’m not mad at anyone. This is what Jesus is doing in my life, and I’m really passionate about it because guess how many one of these lives we get? One.
And I actually believe that Jesus is alive, and I believe there’s a time set for me and you. We don’t know when it is, and we will step across the line of eternity.
Some of you probably read the news this morning. Last night, an amazing—phenomenal—18-year-old boy stepped into eternity. And I got the opportunity last night to gather with maybe a hundred students, pray with them, try to help them process—one of their friends is gone.
And I found comfort in knowing that a lot of those kids follow Jesus, and right now they’re going to have the opportunity to do what Jesus would do with the people in their life that are broken and that are hurting, that are grieving.
But I also sat in that locker room last night and thought about every one of the kids who, when they look around their life, it’s in ruins because they spend their whole life following other human beings and they don’t know the invitation to follow Jesus.
And if you’re here and you’re a follower of Jesus, that is our privilege. That is our commission. That is our calling.
Dallas Willard says it like this: “The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who by profession or culture are identified as Christians will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ—steadily learning from him how to live the life of the kingdom of the heavens into every corner of human existence.”
It’s our opportunity. It’s our calling. And there’s no plan B. Jesus has given this to us as followers to see his kingdom come and his will be done.
So as we close today, I thank you for your grace and your patience. But if you’re here this morning and you’ve spent most your life, you say, “Daron, I’m kind of struggling here because I think I’ve spent most my life trying to be a Christian, and no one really let me know that it wasn’t that—try to be a Christian—but the whole idea was I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it as I need to follow Jesus to be with him and to be like him and to do what he would do. And I just want to say yes, okay?”
We put a great resource together right in that back corner. Said you said yes. If you say, “You know what? I’m done trying to be a Christian. I want to become a disciple of Jesus.” Go over there at the end of the service and get one of those kits. We’ll help you figure it out.
If you’re here this morning, you say, “You know what, Daron? My life is in ruins, and I didn’t know there was a living God. I didn’t know his name was Jesus, and I didn’t know that he wants to actually guide and direct me and help my life actually flourish with faith and hope and love. And I’d like to start following that God.” Then go back to that corner afterwards and say, “I said yes. I want to become a follower of Jesus.”
Our prayer as a staff is that this next month transforms many of your lives so you will look back and you will say, “Those were the days that I began to be with Jesus so I could become like Jesus, and now I’m actually doing the things that Jesus did.”
Father, be with us. Give us the humility, the courage to say yes to come and follow you. God, I pray your presence upon the brokenhearted, your comfort, your compassion. I pray for each one of us that walks with the brokenhearted that we would show up and be with them the way that you are with us. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.