How do I begin following Jesus?

You can work through these items right now or ask someone who is a Christian or a pastor to help you think through them if you have questions.

Confess. Confess that you have sinned and are a sinner.

Believe. Believe that there is a God, and that God's son, Jesus, died and came back to life to get rid of your sin.

Receive. Receive God's healing and forgiveness as you accept Jesus' healing love in your life.

Live. Try to live in line with Jesus' teachings as expressed in God's word, the Bible, particularly the New Testament.

Seek. See the guidance of God's Holy Spirit and the community of believers (the church) to understand the Bible and how to live the Christian life.

You can pray the above as a prayer putting the above in “I” language:

I confess that I have sinned.

I believe there is a God. I believe that God's son, Jesus, died and came back to life to get rid of my sin. I can live now and in the future in peace with God.

I receive God's healing and forgiveness through Jesus.

I will try to live in line with God's word.

I will seek the guidance of God's Holy Spirit and the community of believers (the church) to understand the Bible. I want to live the kind of life of love Jesus would have me to live.

Amen.

If you have questions or want additional help, feel free to contact us at .

Adapted from “A Concise Reference” for faith, Mennonite Church USA.

Martin Luther: God does not want hearers and repeaters of words, but doers and followers who exercise themselves in the faith that worketh by love. (From A Compend of Luther's Theology, 16th century reformer)

Hans Denck: For whoever thinks they belong to Christ must walk the way that Christ walked. (From Anabaptism in Outline, early Anabaptist leader)

Ron Sider: Following Jesus means we look in the face of Jesus and say, "I want you to be in charge of my life. That means my family life, my pocketbook, my business life, my politics, the way I conduct my sexual life: every single part of my life I turn over and surrender to you." It immediately also means saying, "I know I can't do that very well and I'll mess it up even though I want to follow you. So thank you for continuing to accept me in spite of the fact that I mess it up."

Susan Muto: In my personal life, it's inconceivable for me to imagine walking my way through this world without the Lord at my side. He's very with me in so many life experiences: the suffering Jesus is with me in times of pain; the compassionate Christ is with me when I reach out in my ministry and help other people; when I sense the depth of my own sinfulness, he is with me as savior and redeemer.

Tim Amstutz: Discipleship means walking with Jesus: being a learner. It means we're followers of Jesus, that we walk with him, we're learners and that we're focused on a goal. We know where we're headed. Discipleship and walking with Jesus involves balancing two things. On one hand, Jesus offers us the power of his resurrection in living the Christian life. On the other hand, he also calls us to the path of his cross and suffering. Both of those things have to be brought together in our walk with Jesus. And in that combination is where we see discipleship happening. (World Relief worker, Cambodia)

Some practical ways for Christians to work at following Jesus:

These are all things you can do to increase your discipleship and help you follow Jesus.

1. Bible study: studying God's Word and applying it to your life.
2. Prayer: listening and talking to God.
3. Journaling: keeping a written record of your prayer, reading, and meditation with reflections on your growing spiritual life.
4. Fasting: setting aside time by not eating, not watching TV, or whatever you choose, to give more time to spiritual disciplines.
5. Meditation: reflecting and centering on aspects of Jesus and your relationships with him.
6. Celebration and worship: praising, honoring and offering yourself to God in private and group worship.
7. Group discernment and accountability: voluntary sharing with a group of fellow believers about your life. The group can help you figure out direction with decisions and help to hold you accountable in accordance with scriptures.
8. Confession: Confessing your sins to God and to those you have wronged, asking forgiveness.
9. Service: giving time, talents and yourself to others.
10. Solitude: periods of silence away from people and other distractions.
11. Giving and tithing: offering gifts and financial resources to the work of God's kingdom.
12. Simplicity: learning to focus only on our needs, not our desires.

Words Of Jesus offers readers a modern translation of Christ's words, lifted from the New Testament Gospels, and organized according to subject, in multiple languages.

Seeing Jesus	Words from Believers
	Francesco, Sicily: We emphasize not only confessing Christ by word but with life. Obedience to scripture in daily life is really important and not just going through the motions. Many Christians feel that as long as they go to church and practice sacraments it’s enough. Our emphasis is on love, forgiveness, and honesty. Juliet, England: Church is more than going on a Sunday. Church is relationships, it’s sharing whatever resources you have, it’s being real and vulnerable with one another, it’s eating together, so primarily we meet in homes. Alan, England: Jesus didn’t generally start out by telling people they had sinned. In Jesus’ presence we all are sinners, and some people in Jesus’ presence discover their sin and discover his forgiveness very powerfully and some people can only see that he’s receiving the wrong kind of people. I see in Jesus a tremendous compassion when he looks at sinful people because he knows that sin is addictive and gets people completely bound up. It deprives them of their freedom, deprives them of their perspective and I believe that Jesus’ love and forgiveness can set people free. Daniel, Cuba: I sense Jesus in the love of the congregation.
	Judith, London: I believe this is where Christ has called me to be. And until I hear otherwise this is where I am and it can be very painful and discouraging but Christ never promised that the way of following him was going to be one of smoothness and ease. From way back when Sean and I first got married and lived in the poorest area of Manchester, we saw racial divisions there, we saw poverty there on a mass scale, and we saw the frustration of people that bubbled out into these riots. And we saw at that time that the churches of those areas including the church we belonged to, was totally unprepared for what happened. It just was not in tune with the signs of the times. I think that will be increasingly the case unless sensitive Christians are living in areas like this and listening to what’s going on. Noel, England: Go back to the Sermon on the Mount. It’s no good saying, well, scripture says do not commit murder. No good saying I’m OK there I haven’t done that. Or do not commit adultery, I’m OK there. And then he just comes in and says is your attitude ever murderous. Is your attitude ever adulterous? Now I find that liberating. Of course I realize there are all sorts of attitudes and thoughts and reactions and things that would fail the test at one level. But I realize we’re doing the absolutely basic level. Jesus did not come to bring another religion. Gospel is smashing the whole concept of religion. It’s talking about a living relationship with God. It’s talking about spirituality. And that’s why I think Jesus is so relevant today, because many people are saying I’m not interested in religion, but I’m interested in spirituality. Leslie, USA: Many people look at being saved as being saved from just sin or saved from an old lifestyle. I tend to think that when we talk about the salvation that Jesus offers, it reaches beyond that: salvation from poverty, salvation from neglect and abuse, salvation from the past lifestyles. We ’re saved to a new complete way of living in Christ where there’s a freedom, there’s an abundance, there’s a new joy in serving the Lord.
	Stuart, England: My impression is that much of the time the disciples were scratching their heads wondering what he was talking about, and again and again he just shocked them with the things he was doing, and I think we have lost some of that. What does that Sermon on the Mount passage about turning the other cheek really mean? What does going the second mile really mean? It’s often presented as a doormat Christianity where I think it’s about creative responses to conflict. Wendell, Bolivia: What I ’ve come to find is that in my own life I’m incapable of discovering God’s will. I’m incapable of learning enough about it to go ahead and do it which is what I had intended to do as a young man. I considered that we were sufficiently well equipped, having been raised in all those religious schools to know what God wanted of people. It was simply a question of will to go and do it. After 20 some years I’ve discovered that the really basic struggle is the inward one. My will is really in counter position to God’s most of the time. I go back and read what some of those Anabaptist martyrs said about submitting to will. They were talking about submitting they were talking about submitting to fire, submitting to water, submitting to indignities, submitting to misunderstanding of godless people who were persecuting them, submitting to the will of the church in a rather absolute way that for 20th century people is not attractive. But when that submission comes from a deep understanding of our dependence on God and the futility of being able to follow God’s will out of our own understanding, then I think that’s a positive, beautiful and freeing concept of being fully submitted to God’s will. Noel, England: I think the way he calls us to community, absolutely crucial. There is so much focus on me as an individual Christian following Jesus. But it ’s us following him, you know. I need your help. You need my help. We need to be encouraging one another in this journey.
	Adrian, England: The bride of Christ imagery that is so common in 16th century radical literature, means that they were so head over heels for Jesus that even though they haven’t got a worked out theology of mission, they can’t help talking about the one whom they love, the one with whom they have an intimate relationship. Noel, England: Where does a marriage start? It starts by falling in love. It starts with an encounter and then you say I want to know this person better. But of course people encounter Jesus in different ways. There are people who have very dramatic encounters through a set of circumstances or something they’ve read or something like that, while others may just be intrigued by things about him. Jaime, Costa Rica: Understanding Jesus is like understanding a mosaic.