Faith for the Journey

While it is true that deciding to follow Jesus is accepting a call to know-not-where, such a beckoning never really ends.  Most of us think in those beginning steps that we know where we are going.  Right or wrong, we have our expectations about the difference following Jesus is going to make in our life.  When we say "Yes" to Jesus, we may even have a plan in our mind that seems most likely.  Our beginning notions may actually get in the way of going where Christ wants us to go even though it may not be obvious to us in the beginning.   

The truth is we did not know then, nor do we know now.  To live with faith in Christ means going where He leads and not according to our plans and expectations.  Where He leads is always going to be outside of our comfort zone.  A Christian life lived within comfort zones is not really Christian living.  Christian living is not about us being in control, but about Jesus being in control.  At its core living by faith means turning lose of the controls of our life and trusting Jesus to be in charge.   To live within our comfort zone creates no challenge for us.  We can depend upon ourselves.  Our comfort zone is the place where we have placed everything in a particular place and where we only need ourselves to sustain life.  Such is not the way Jesus leads us.  

As we start whining in our spiritual life about the changes Jesus is asking us to make, we need to realize that without such leading we are going to live a mediocre spiritual life that takes us nowhere except deeper into a kind of spiritual entrenchment in the status quo.  To read the gospel is to see Jesus moving steadily toward the point of risking His whole life on the cross as an expression of His obedience to the Father.  Those of us who are serious about following Jesus should not expect a journey to the rose garden, but a journey of faith which takes us to the place of total abandonment to the Father's will.