Suppose you had the chance to interview God. The conversation might go something like this:
Interviewer: What do you want most for human beings?
God: Above all, I want humans to develop a life like my Son, Jesus. I want their attitudes and actions to mirror His. In other words, I want them to live a Jesus-kind of life.
Interviewer: Why is this your deepest desire for humanity?
God: When humans become like my Son, they will love me the way He does, and I can love them the way I love Him.
Three Foundations for Becoming Like Jesus
God has given us three foundational practices that put us on the path to becoming like Jesus.
(1) Prayer and Bible Reading: An old rock song asks, “Who is God and what’s on His mind?” We find the answer in the availability of God’s Word through the Bible. The Bible reveals Jesus’ character and challenges us to imitate it.
Prayer, meanwhile, gives us a life-giving relationship with God. Some of history’s greatest Christians lacked access to the written Word, but they excelled in prayer. Prayer placed them in a life-giving relationship with God that changed their lives and that of people around them.
Today, we live in a time when the Bible is as close as an app on our phones, and prayer remains constantly available.
As we read the Bible, we “hear” God’s voice; prayer is how we respond to Him.
(2) Obedience: Frank Laubach noted nearly 50 instances in the Gospels where Jesus told the crowd, in one way or another, that He only did what the Father directed Him to do. If we are to adopt the attitudes and actions of Jesus, we must increasingly reflect His obedience.
Between reading the Bible and listening to the whispers of the Holy Spirit, we are challenged every day to follow God’s directions. Laubach was right when he said, “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it makes everything else easier.”
(3) Faith-Stretching Experiences: Ancient Catholic teaching refers to faith-stretching experiences as “crosses.” They contend that God uses these cross-like experiences to accomplish within us what nothing else can.
The Disciples’ Faith is Stretched
The disciples who traveled with Jesus were His closest companions. What better picture could we find of the value of Bible reading and prayer? They naturally talked to Him (prayer) and listened to Him (Bible reading) all day long.
The disciples also practiced obedience. While they frequently made mistakes—often demonstrating the wrong attitudes—they were quick to realign their actions and mindsets with those of Jesus.
Without a doubt, one of the least favorite foundational elements of their training occurred when their faith was tested. They had left everything to follow this revolutionary figure, only to face the prospect of His death—and their own—before accomplishing their mission. Here is how it happened:
And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A windstorm suddenly arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep.
And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a dead calm.
They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:23-27)
The principle is this: God uses the “crosses”—the faith-stretching experiences of life—to conform us to the image of His Son.
These men were veteran sailors. They likely did everything they knew to stay alive. How often are we just like them? When cross-like experiences come our way, how often do we try to handle them using only our own resources?
They may have even resented the fact that Jesus was able to sleep through the storm.
Elie Wiesel tells the story of a child being hanged by the Nazis during World War II. Because the child was too light for his neck to break instantly, he struggled for life. The crowd murmured in horror, asking, “Where is God?” Wiesel responded, “He is right there. He is with the boy.”
Jesus may have been asleep, but He was fully present all the same. The disciples’ desperate appeal to Him models the exact kind of honest prayer we can utter when our own “crosses” occur.
In verse 27, we learn the disciples were “amazed.” In the Gospel of Matthew, amazement does not automatically translate to faith. It is a good beginning, but it must mature to become true faith. These close followers of Jesus—just like us—needed many more experiences for their faith to grow.
The disciples kept walking with Jesus. They made many mistakes along the way, and Jesus used those missteps to adjust what they thought and did.
The key for us is to keep walking with Jesus. Let’s take advantage of these three foundational practices and pursue the prize of becoming more like Jesus in temperament and action.
YouTube Discussion
Rudy Ross, Bruce Kirby, and I discussed this passage on YouTube today.
Real Voices 