2025: The Year of So Much More….
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
In February 1974, I made the decision to follow Jesus. I did not choose Him that day, He chose me. For 51 years I have been a Christian. For the majority of those years, I have tried to follow Jesus. However, it is only in the last two years that I have begun to understand what that really means. This realization brings both joy and sadness. The joy of being on a deeper journey with Jesus is inexpressible. The sadness of lost years meandering through a maze of relational mediocrity is profoundly sad. For decades I have attended churches that promised eternal salvation in exchange for one hour of devotion a week. I’ve sat under the teaching of pastors who preached cheap grace, never pointing me to the path of the deeper journey with Jesus because they were as unfamiliar with it as I was.
Through a convergence of the pure grace of God, a new focus on both scripture and the writings and teachings of the saints, and the fellowship of a small band of fellow travelers, I’ve discovered a journey I never knew existed. The words that best describe this journey are, so much more. There is so much more to following Jesus than I had ever imagined. There is so much more grace, so much more love, so much more peace. There is so much more intimacy with the triune God, so much more joy in prayer, so much more power to love my enemies, and so much more freedom to become lost in the love of Christ.
This new life comes as a result of embracing its antecedent, namely, that the life of following Jesus begins with so much less. So much less of me, so much less of my agenda, so much less of my identity, so much less of my pride, so much less of my need to perform and produce, so much less of my ownership of the things that only belong to God, so much less of my superficial understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, so much less of everything that is Scott.
In his Advent devotional, Brennan Manning recounts a conversation between Saint Francis and Brother Leo. Brother Leo is struggling with the desire to be holy in his own eyes and Saint Francis responds, “Holiness is not a personal achievement. It’s an emptiness you discover in yourself. Instead of resenting it you accept it, and it becomes the free space where the Lord can create anew. Hoard nothing for yourself, sweep the house clean. Sweep out even the attic, even the nagging painful consciousness of your past. Renounce everything that is heavy, even the weight of your sins. See only the compassion, the infinite patience, and the tender love of Christ. Jesus is Lord. That suffices.”[1]
John Mark Comer, in his typically challenging way, says it this way, “Contrary to what many assume, Jesus did not invite people to convert to Christianity. He didn’t even call people to become Christians, He invited people to apprentice under him into a whole new way of living. To be transformed.” Comer continues, “There is a way of life—modelled personally by Jesus himself—that is far beyond anything else on offer in this world. It can open you up to God’s presence and power in ways most people only dream of.” Then he offers this invitation, “We talk a lot about the call to believe in Jesus—to put your trust and confidence in him to lead you to life. This is good and fitting. But it must also be said that Jesus believes in you. He believes that you can become his apprentice. Starting right where you are you can follow him into a life in the kingdom that fulfills your deepest desires.”[2] Regardless of where we are on our journey with Jesus, there is so much more.
I’m slowly coming to learn that the journey to follow Jesus is a process of being turned inside out, upside down, unfolded, and undone. It leaves no place in life untouched. It does not ask for an equal place in my life with everything else, it demands to become my life. Comer’s description of being an apprentice under Jesus means watching what He does, practicing it under his guiding hand, and then letting him live in and through us.
I used to teach that following Jesus reorders our priorities from self-career-marriage-family-God, to God-marriage-family-career-self. I am coming to see that apprenticing under Jesus means that life has but one priority: intimacy with the triune God. When that relationship has preeminence over our entire life, everything else is filled with richness and purpose. It is the fruit promised by Jesus to those who would “Seek first the kingdom God.” (Matthew 6:33)
Apprenticing under Jesus transforms us into our deepest, truest self—the person God created us to be from the moment of our inception, the person He created us to be from the creation of the world. It is a process of being formed into the people of love in Christ.
Robert Mulholland describes what it means to be transformed into the image of Christ, “Often people have the idea that the image of Christ is something alien to human beings, something strange that God wants to add on to our life, something imposed on us from outside that doesn’t really fit us. In reality, however, the image of Christ is the fulfillment of the deepest hungers of the human heart for wholeness.” He goes on to describe spiritual formation as the great reversal, “from being this subject who controls all other things to being a person who is shaped by the presence, purpose, and power of God in all things.”[3]
This transformation is not a withdrawn, private, cocooning process. It is transformation to a life lived for others. The self-emptying that leads to Christ infilling also leads to selfless service and unconditional love.
For me, the so much more of this journey has been experienced most profoundly in the idea of finding union not only with Christ but within the presence of the Trinity itself. It is taking seriously Paul’s admonition in Ephesians, “We have been raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (2:6) Seated with Christ in the intimate fellowship of the triune God is an overwhelming idea, but it is one that the great saints of the church all understood and experienced. It is our loving God’s invitation to be with Him in a far more profound way than I have ever known or experienced. Yet it is what my soul has thirsted for for 51 years.
Evelyn Underhill puts it this way, “Union with God means every bit of our human nature transfigured in Christ, woven up into his creative life and activity, absorbed into his redeeming purpose, heart, soul, mind, and strength. Each time it happens it means that one of God’s creatures has achieved its destiny.”[4]
We’ve just celebrated the Incarnation – God with us. How does that audacious truth become our lived reality in 2025? I believe it starts when we lose ourselves more deeply, sweep out our attics, surrender our lives down to every second, penny, thought, attitude, pain, and hope. So let us set aside everything else that we had planned for 2025 and make this journey our sole (and soul) aspiration. Jesus is waiting for each one of us. “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” The Holy Spirit and the power of transformation calls to us. The deeper life in union with God and the astonishing transformation of our heart, mind, soul and strength beckons us. Let this be the year we accept Jesus’s invitation to this journey, the journey to so much more.
[1] Brennan Manning, Shipwrecked at the Stable, in Watch for the Light, Orbis 2001
[2] John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way, WaterBrook, 2024
[3] Robert Mulholland, Invitation to a Journey, InterVarsity Press, 2016
[4] Evelyn Underhill, The Light of the World, in Watch for the Light, Orbis 2001
