If I am going to be a Jesus-follower, I need to be intentional about relating with Jesus, interacting with Him through my day to day experience. What makes this hard is that the conversation seems one-sided. I do not hear Him speak, I only ‘sense’ His direction or guidance of wisdom. It’s a thought or feeling inside of me that seems to be from Him. But how do I confirm this? How do I know its not just my own thoughts and feelings, or Satan misleading me?
The best answer I can come up with is His example. I look to the gospels especially for insight into how Jesus operated. Though it doesn’t answer all of my questions, it does help shape my general thinking and behaviour, and gives me enough to go on when I do not have all the answers I need or want.
For me to be a Jesus-follower, I need to allow my reading of the Jesus stories to shape me. I need to saturate my thinking with what Jesus said and did. As I do so, I need to trust that His Spirit is effecting change in my heart, making me more and more like Jesus. I have discovered that when I face a situation, and I talk it through with Him (i.e. when I pray), I can usually sense what the right response to that situation would be. More than I realize, my time ‘with Jesus’ in the Gospels, with the Spirit’s help, is shaping me.
This is why I read every bible passage with the stories of Jesus in my mind. For every passage outside of the gospels, I try to find a link to the stories about Jesus, what He said or did. Its not always easy, but for me its necessary. It’s the only way I can make sense of the rest of the bible. Jesus captures the idea of God best for me, and He is the lens through which I view the rest of the bible.
I think reading the bible with Jesus, through the Spirit in us, is an essential part of what it means to be a Jesus-follower. And most of our time needs to be spent in the gospels. The more we know Jesus, the better we will be able to follow Him, and serve Him.