What do you think of when I say, “Jesus People”? [ASK]

It brings lot of pictures to the mind, doesn’t it? Maybe some of them are good, maybe some of them are…less good.

For the next several weeks, we’re going to focus on how to live like Jesus People. And when I use that phrase, I’m hoping to get to the practical, day-to-day heart of what it means to live as Jesus wants us to live. What does it look like to be a Christian? What tangible things are a part of a life of someone who gives their heart to following Jesus?

I think for many of us, it is really helpful to name in real concrete terms what it means to follow God. We understand and want to be different from people who don’t follow Jesus, but how that happens, what it looks like, how we get there can be a challenge as we go through a normal week.

It’s not so much that we stubbornly don’t want to change, as it is that we’re not sure what change looks like.

So in this series, we’ll try to take a few specific and practical issues that “look like” following Jesus.

Things like honesty, sexual integrity, working hard and working well, forgiveness, and generosity, to name a few. What do those things look like in real life? Part of the goal is to paint a picture of what could be, so that we have something to aim for.

Something we’ll have to wrestle with all the way through is this: What is our responsibility in living like Jesus People, and what is God’s? How do we keep a healthy perspective, so we’re not feeling guilty for our failures, and incredibly proud of our own successes? How do we let God truly work in our lives, without failing to follow through on the parts that are truly ours?

One of the ways we’ll remind ourselves of this tension all the way through is to use the word, “practice”.

Practice! It’s a really rich word, isn’t it? What are some of the varieties of meaning the word “practice” has? [ASK] (not the real thing, just trying, hard work, effort, painful, hold it loosely).

I like saying that it’s our intention to practice the actions that Jesus want us to do. It implies that we’ll keep trying till we get it right. And, it implies a habit, a way of life.

We won’t always get things right. The expectation is not perfection. The expectation is practice….we will make an effort, we will try, we will listen to the coach and do the hard work of trying to overcome our bad habits and re-learn correct ones.

I can’t help but think of high school baseball practice. One day in particular stands out. We used to set up these wiffle ball stations, where we’d rotate through all these different hitting drills: lead hand, drive hand, right knee down, left knee down, outside pitch, inside pitch, etc.

It was like 20 or 30 stations, and at the beginning of the season, this was the way we built the calluses on our hands…by making them bloody first. The day I remember was my freshman year, when my hands were KILLING me, and it was FREEZING cold, and every swing stung…and then, on top of all that, it started to snow.

I didn’t love baseball because of THIS!

But that day was part of why I had one of those moments that I DID love baseball for, the day months later when I hit a double off the wall in one of our first games.

Practice made me work to retrain my mind and the muscles of my body. It toughened my hands and strengthened my arms.

I didn’t hit every ball well in practice. Not even close! But the effort, doing things I wouldn’t have done except for the fact that the coach told me to do it, changed me, slowly, over time.

So, does practice make perfect? Is it all up to us?

When it comes to our life with God, there are things we need to do, an effort we need to make. But if that is ALL there is, if it is ONLY our effort, then you might as well leave your bible on the shelf and buy some good self-help books, a trainer and a life coach.

If it’s only what we put into it, then only a few of us will really succeed at living like Jesus people. If it’s only what talents and effort we bring to the table, then only the best of the best of us can live like Jesus.

This is yet another way that Jesus turned the world upside down.

He chooses ALL of us, and tells us we have what it takes. He opens the door wide for ALL of us to follow him, gives ALL of us the opportunity to become Jesus people.

Rob Bell, a phenomenal bible teacher in Grand Rapids, Michigan, brings this to life by helping us understand what it meant to follow a rabbi in the first century, and how Jesus was different. Take a look. [SHOW VIDEO]

I love this!

There’s the incredibly challenging standard of living like Jesus in every way, of devoting ourselves to being like Jesus, to living as Jesus People. It’s a challenge for the best of the best!

But Jesus thinks we can do it! Jesus chooses us to follow him, to take his yoke, to follow his way of life.

Jesus believes in us!

God believes in you! He thinks you can live like his Son. And this is our start on this journey, this is where we begin to become Jesus people: trusting, accepting, believing that God believes in us!

And what a powerful picture ahead of us, if in the opportunities you and I face every day, we practice being Jesus people!

Look at what we read just a little bit ago:

“Go out into the world, pure, clean, uncorrupted…a breath of fresh air in this diseased and polluted society, in this warped and crooked generation. Give people a glimpse of good living and the living God! Carry the light-giving Message into the night. Yes, you will shine among them like lights in a dark world!”

NIV says, “Children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe!”

God believes in us, and God’s purpose for us is to shine, brightly, straight and true and pure and without fault in a corrupt world.

But Jesus doesn’t choose only those who are already that way: he opens the door wide to us all, and it is God who lives in and through us.

We have a task; but our task isn’t to do it all on our own power.

Our task is to practice.

We “put into action God’s saving work in our lives.” It’s a terrifying thing to recognize that WE are God’s plan for changing the world. That’s the “work with fear and trembling to discover what it really means to be saved” from Philippians that we read earlier.

But we don’t have to muster up some superhuman effort to live like Jesus people. We practice it by listening to the coach and showing up and making the effort and giving God room to work in our lives.

“For God is deep within you…God himself…giving you the power to do what pleases him, willing and working to fulfill his good purpose in you.”

One of the words used for work here is the word from which we get OUR word, energy. God’s energy is within us. His power infuses us. He is working for good in us, and it’s his pleasure, his will, his desire to do that.

This is one of the most powerful places in the bible that tries to balance our effort with complete confidence that God is the one at work.

In each of the upcoming weeks, we’ll be neatly separating out these various themes. Of course life itself is never that neat and tidy and separate; it’s all woven together.

Part of our work, part of our practice together, is to look carefully and hard at what kinds of characteristics Jesus wants us to exhibit. Part of our practice is sharing with each other what it looks like to be generous, what it looks like to show hospitality.

Then we commit together to trying it out, under the power and direction of God.

I’m hoping several things will happen, as we have the goal of living like Jesus people. I’m hoping that several of you will share your stories, the ways you yourself or others have been examples of what it looks like to follow Jesus. We need real, flesh and blood people and examples in front of us! They help us know what to practice.

And I’m hoping that as we try, as we attempt, as we practice, God’s energy and work and activity will show up in us in ways we don’t expect.

God believes in us.

Jesus chooses us to do what he does in the world. We can shine like stars in this world! Can we join this journey of practicing to let God work through us together?