Blog

Written by Chris Mason
on 17th February 2023

It's super easy to make things complicated. It's almost as if we do it by default. We do in so much of life. We also do it in our walk with Jesus, both alone and together as the church.

Jesus kept things super simple. When we read the New Testament we read of people asked by Jesus to "follow me" - to let everything go, to lay everything down, and to follow him. You couldn't get much more simple. The outworking of that simple, yet costly, decision though is to live a life keeping him in the centre; to keep things 'simply' all about Jesus.

Sounds easy. It's not.

We are pros at adding things to that simple request to Follow Him. Surely it can't be as simple as leading people to follow him...just him. In our efforts to make things 'easy' for people to follow Jesus, we often make it more complicated.  They're rarely bad things that we add in - they're usually really good things but added together, they make it all quite complicated.  And complicated isn't bad - it just doesn't multiply very easily.  

However, Jesus teaches us where to go to keep things simply about him - we need to keep coming back to God himself...keeping him the main thing

But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private.
Matthew 6:6a (NLT)

One of our challenges is to keep the main thing the main thing - to keep it all so simple.  To strip out all the extra and come back to basics.  To introduce people to Jesus, fix their eyes on Jesus, so that they can introduce others to Jesus.  It really is that simple.  Sure, there are theological debates and ecclesiological arguments to be had, but at its heart Christianity is simply about a disciple of Jesus making another disciple of Jesus - everything else...???

Lisa and I ask ourselves regularly whether we are using our time for the most important things of simply leading people to Jesus...making disciples - is our life simple enough to find people to lead to Jesus.  Often we're not and we have to keep coming back: 'is Jesus at the centre of everything I am and everything I'm doing?' 

Here's my question today, how do you use your time?  

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

Making disciples of Jesus who follow Jesus' every word and obey it.  Everything else...might just be extra.