What Will You Do?

“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked.

Matthew 27:22

 What will you do with this Jesus? If he does not already have you, there is every indication that he still has some plan to offer you God’s extravagant generosity. It is evident that he is not going to go away. Two thousand years later, he is still showing up. How many attempts to reach you has he made in your life? You can avoid him for a while, but sooner or later he shows up again. There he is now, working afresh in an old friend you never thought was interested much in religion. There he is at a funeral for a coworker, his words tugging at your heart. There he is in a stranger who befriends you and then invites you to something that has do with him.

Francis Thompson used the picturesque phrase “The Hound of Heaven” to describe him in his famous poem. He has your scent, and he keeps coming after you, not to cajole you or entrap you, but to give you yet another chance to sit at his banquet table, yet another chance to taste that he is, in fact, very good. What will you do with him?

There were those in the Gospels who had their chance, turned it down and went away, never to be heard from again. A bright young man had his chance. He was quite interested in Jesus, but more interested in his money. He went away sad. We can assume that his situation eventually got worse. That is not what Jesus wanted—not for him, not for me, not for you. He came to offer you God’s abundance. It will cost you everything. It will give you much more.

I decided thirty-five [now forty-five] years  ago to follow this Jesus. What I really decided, although I didn’t understand it at the time, was to let Jesus open a storehouse of grace for me. He has fulfilled his promises. He has blessed me with family. He has given me friends. He has helped me grow up. He has forgiven me much more than “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). He has guided me, and sometimes carried me, through some serious storms. He has taught me how to have joy in trials. But more than anything, he has shown me that his willingness to give me grace is as unending as my need for it. Some tough challenges surely lie ahead, but as a follower of his in a Nazi concentration camp once observed, “No pit is so deep that he is not deeper still.” 

I have decided to follow Jesus. And you?