following Jesus | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Don’t Walk Away From Jesus, but if You Do, He Still Looks at You and Loves You

It’s a beautiful offer: Come follow Jesus on a life of divine

guidance on faith-challenging and exciting adventures.

Chasing ambitions, strutting our stuff exhausts us, but the excitements of

knowing the ever-fresh, surprising Jesus—those are inexhaustible. That’s the

magic part. Success, making money—that ego-driven slog is the boring part!

There is a cost to following Jesus, of course. We have to

move in the direction he moves, and do what he tells us to.

While he was on earth, Christ was active, energetic, roaming

through Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Following him will

mean movement and challenge. But we can’t walk behind him

laden with suitcases and backpacks stuffed with our treasures.

What would you reject Jesus’s micro-calls on your life for?

That is the idol that currently grips and possesses you.

I hear him tell me to become fitter, declutter my house,

and then move. And when I neglect these imperatives,

an idol has taken priority: my podcast and writing, alas.

So, I must surrender daily, balancing Jesus’s call to

health and peaceful housekeeping with the call to write.

What do you hear him calling you to sacrifice to follow

him? Do it. Don’t go away grieving. Nothing is worth

the sadness, the second-bestness, of not choosing Jesus.

I have decided to follow Jesus. But I waver. But for us, who

struggle to relinquish our idols of glory, achievement, whatever,

but still yearn for the peace of Jesus, there is yet mercy. Jesus

says a camel can more easily squeeze through the eye of a needle

than the treasure-burdened experience God’s peaceable

kingdom, but adds that “With God, all things are possible.”

So even we, conditioned from youth to strive, to achieve and succeed,

Can still, in fits and snatches, find our spirits singing on a walk or

during worship in church, or find our hearts strangely warmed by

Scripture, and, sometimes, even “see” Christ stand before us.

Christ looks at us, Christ loves us, and says, “With God, all things

are possible,” even we, the flawed, entering his beautiful Kingdom.

Thank you, Jesus.

On Living Life Single-hearted and Double-handed

By Anita Mathias

I had a fascinating conversation over a church lunch with a retired British missionary who had worked in Indonesia for 45 years. He had a boyish smile, and sparkling eyes.

At an age at which most people have two or three major subjects of conversation—their health; their children and grandchildren; or the general decay of the country, and universe–he was sprightly, talking of Skype conversations with people he is mentoring; of reading the Bible in three languages; of hosting Indonesians, and cooking them Indonesian food.

I enjoyed talking to him, and realised that loving Jesus is the best retirement plan. That to arrive at old age with a heart full of love for God, for Jesus, for the Spirit, for Scripture, and for people is the best investment.

I also realised to my shame that I had been single-handed instead of single-hearted in following Jesus. Part of me sought Jesus, and part of my heart was distracted with writing, something in which I have not been particularly successful—yet. The Chinese have a proverb, “He who chases two rabbits catches neither.” Sometimes, when you chase Jesus with one hand, and chase success with the other, God does not bless the latter to help you pursue what is important with both hands, and an undivided heart.

While work you love is certainly an excellent asset for old age, it is not as heart and soul-filling as friendship with Jesus. It does not surpass a relationship with the Father who “takes great delight in you, who quiets you with his love, who rejoices over you with singing.” (Zeph 3:17)

Talking to my new friend, I resolved again to try to be an apprentice of Jesus, to follow Him with my whole heart, to go through the narrow door into the vast starry world beyond with Jesus, and who knows, I may very well find there the other things my distracted heart had wanted.

An apprentice of Jesus, that’s what Dallas Willard calls a Christian, and that apprenticeship is both a life of excitement, and a unique path for each apprentice.

And I realised again that our greatest contribution may well be who we are, not what we do. A wise person, a good person, a person who knows God, a person with a heart full of love and kindness, whom you feel better, and course-corrected after a short conversation with—being such a person is a greater contribution to the world that anything we might do!

“The great paradox of our lives is that while we are often concerned about what we do or still can do, we are most likely to be remembered for who we were. If it was the Spirit who guided our lives, that will not die. Our doing brings success, but our being bears fruit.” Henri Nouwen

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Why I have Decided to Follow Jesus

By Anita Mathias

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4 18-20)

“Come follow me, Anita?”

Yes, I will follow you, because life feels pointless without you.

I will follow you because the world without you—it doesn’t hack it: much labour for things which will not satisfy–without you

I will follow you because I am weary of myself. I want to lose myself in you. In that loss, I feel safe.

I will follow you because I don’t know how to do life. But your version of a God-bathed world, held safe in your Father’s hands, which the meek will inherit, I love it! I believe in it.

I will follow you because in worshipping you is my soul complete.

I will follow you because in you I find love, vast as the ocean.

I will follow you because of your goodness that flows like a waterfall towards me. I need but to kneel and receive.

I will follow you because (sorry, this is silly!) nothing makes me as hyper as your words, and the bubbly Holy Spirit you released through your death. In them is rest for my restlessness.

I will follow you because you promise complete joy. You are the narrow gate which leads to life. I will shrug off all that impedes me so I can enter through it.

* * *

I will follow you because no one ever spoke as you did.

I will follow you, because you are so clever. I love the way you got out of all those tricks and traps—taxes to Caesar and stoning that woman and dividing inheritances–with your cool, collected intellect. You instinctively think outside the box, you clever person. And if I follow you, you will teach me wisdom and to stay cool and calm under pressure. (And forgive, now, this selfish motivation).

Yes, I will follow you because you are brilliant. I love thinking about those wild things you said. “Take the lower place; turn the other cheek; the meek inherit the earth; don’t resist an evil person; give and you shall receive.” I love how obeying them, even in baby steps, turns my life upside down.

I will follow you because I know I will never “get” you fully. You will come to me with fresh challenges as long as I live, drawing me upward and onward. I’ll wrestle with your words till I die. Those Beatitudes! The Sermon on the Mount! A whole life’s worth of meditation and challenge.

I will follow you because you are the Word, and I am a writer. And so you will give me the words I need to speak, and protect me from words I do not need to speak.

I will follow you because He who drinks of the waters you give him will never thirst, but rivers of living water will flow from him. What writer would not want rivers of living water to flow from her?

* * *

I will follow you because you are spectacular. The way you cared for everyone you encountered as you gasped your way through the excruciating crucifixion—Wow, Jesus!

I will follow you because learning to love is important, and you know how, and you will teach me.

I will follow you because you are magnetic. You are good, and you are kind. Nothing else in my world compels me as you do.

I will follow you because you are the Living Bread which came down from heaven. If I eat you, I will not hunger, and so in you is the solution to my food issues and addictions.

I will follow you because, well, what else could I follow? Ambition will exhaust me. Mastery of a craft will not satisfy my heart. Money? I earn enough for my simple-ish tastes.

I will follow you, because as C. S. Lewis said, what you say is so outrageous, it’s either completely nuts. Or true. And to me, it tastes of truth. You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I will follow you, just because…I love you.

Jesus, Positive Thinking, and Mental Health

By Anita Mathias

Mental health, like physical health, is on a continuum. When someone totally loses it, and is obviously “mad” enough to be sectioned, we say they’ve lost touch with reality.

But how few of us see reality as it really is. With a God’s eye view. As Jesus taught us to see it.

If we could train ourselves to see and think the way Jesus taught us to, what splendid mental health we’d have!!

* * *

Jesus’s teaching was strikingly positive. And here are a few ways I am trying to train myself to think the way Jesus taught us to. And better mental health will be a fringe benefit of this.

1 He taught us not to be afraid.

“Do not be afraid,” echoes through the Gospels. Most of our fears never come to pass. And even when our anxious minds help produce the very thing we most dread, God’s help is available to help us deal with it.

There is a difference between prudence (adjusting one’s actions because an adverse outcome is very probable), and fear: irrational dread!

2 Jesus told us not to worry about anything at all.

What a splendid recipe for mental health, freeing us from circular and literally sickening worry. Worry is particularly unproductive, because most of our worries (like most of our fears) don’t come to pass, and, again, God’s help is available in our worst case scenarios.

3 Jesus advises us not to judge.

Judging is like deciding on 360 degrees of someone’s personality based on 10 degrees of information. It leads to a shrivelling of the heart, of emotional intelligence, and of our life-experience because of the habit of rapidly writing people off.

And when in obedience to Jesus, we refuse to judge, but instead remain open, we learn, we learn, we learn!

4 Another startling bit of advice Jesus gives is forgiving if you have aught against any. How sweeping.

When specific grievances surface in my conscious mind, I attempt to dissolve them by thanking God for the good things about the person, by praying for the person as whole-heartedly as I can, and by praying for grace to turn the acid and claws of my feelings towards that person into sweetness.

Any hatred–towards nations, for instance–is as harmful to our mental and emotional health as hated of individuals. I recently talked to a Christian man who was consumed, to the point of mild insanity, with his hatred of the US and the harm its foreign policy has done. Releasing aught against any would require him to release his hatred of the US—not for the sake of the US, but for his own sake.

I similarly know two American Christian men who are consumed by their hatred and dislike of Barack Obama. Gosh, I have never witnessed such hatred towards a politician as many American Christian nurture towards Obama. If I hated Obama as much as these two friends of mine appear to, I would need to “forgive” him before I stood praying to keep the waterfall of grace between me and God flowing and unclogged.

Far-fetched? I remember Catherine Marshall saying she had to forgive Henry VIII for his desecration of monasteries as part of her releasing aught against any.

5 Another instruction of Jesus which is greatly conducive to mental health is “Do not let your hearts be troubled; neither let them be afraid. Trust in the Father, trust also in me.”

* * *

So many of Paul’s precepts are about following Christ in the secret place of the thoughts.

Rejoice always; in everything give thanks. Believe everything works out for good.

Paul’s life was full of extreme pressures—both glorious preaching, miracles and influence, and imprisonment, solitary confinement, floggings, slander, and disgrace.

The mental health and strength he cultivated in the secret places of his heart kept him sane, productive and creative in the very direst places of his life, such as the dreadful Mamertine Dungeon from which he wrote his most joyful and inspiring letters.

Ah, obeying what Jesus taught us as literally as we can! Mental health flows from it, and creativity too!