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Wednesday, June 10, 2020 - Join Pastor John for a Daily Devotional

June 10, 2020 by Rev. John Hartman

“Be Like Jesus”

As I watched the Michael Jordan documentary on ESPN, I had forgotten what a global icon he became, and how his successes on the basketball court led to many business opportunities off the court. MJ earned roughly somewhere around $1.7 billion (pre-tax) in sponsorship money over nearly four decades. He has endorsed Nike, Hanes, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wheaties, and Chevrolet, just to name a few. And back in Jordan’s prime, we were told to drink Gatorade, in order to “Be Like Mike!”

Spending time in the pages of God’s word allows us to immerse ourselves in the figure of Jesus Christ, and we absorb, as if we were tea bags, the person of Jesus, -- his way with people, his moment-by-moment intimacy with his Father as he lived each day, the sparkle in Jesus’ eye as he held great crowds of people spellbound with his wonderful stories, the parables, and yes, even his anger. He was a man capable of moral outrage, who would make a whip on the spot to crack over the head of rascals as he drove them from a holy building. Yet, he was also a man of such tenderness that little groups of children would gather as he spoke, knowing that when Jesus had finished speaking to their parents, he would come over and get down on the grass to play with them.

Don’t you want to be like Jesus! Then, spend time in his word and in prayer. It will take work, effort and spiritual discipline, because it won’t come naturally. We get there through a process of sustained effort, what the late Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction.” It would be great if I could hold a weekend seminar on Zoom, after which we all behave just like Jesus, but the process doesn’t work that way.

As Christians, we need to develop the habits and the disciplines of discipleship. We need to make it a habit to wake up each morning, ask God into our day, and pray over the new day’s schedule. We need to make a habit of confessing our sin, moment by moment, and receiving the grace of our God into our lives as we go through our day. The Apostle Paul wrote, “If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” Roman 5:17. We need to cultivate the disciplines of discipleship – prayer and study, -- to always be growing, always be changing in order to “be like Jesus.”