Do you have an exciting Christian walk, or does your Christian life feel empty, dull, and boring? Do you feel like Jesus, your shepherd, is far away and disconnected?

Would you like to be one of His inner circle?

Who belonged to His inner circle when He was on earth? His disciples, right?

He had many followers, but few disciples. Many people followed Him when He performed miracles and healed their sick. However, when He started talking about going to the cross, many left Him. So many left, that He asked His closest friends, His twelve disciples if they were going to leave Him too.

You, too, can be more than a follower. You can be one of His disciples. Wouldn’t each day take on a different flavor?

Being a born-again believer is more involved than most know.

A believer is a person that is “set right in relation to God’s law and born again to a new life; the person is henceforth dedicated to the service of God. Bought with a price, he is no longer his own…A saved man, then, is one who has been set right with God, adopted into the Divine family and is now dedicated to God’s service…Being justified, he belongs to the righteous; being regenerated, he is a child of God; being sanctified, he is a ‘saint’ (literally, a holy person). Myer Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines of  the Bible. 1937 pg. 219

Perhaps, as believers, we only take the first two steps – justified and adoption. That is all we want. We want to escape hell but continue to live our own lives. We don’t want to surrender our lives to God. We want to maintain control. And we definitely don’t want to be ‘holy.’ We all have preconceived ideas of what being ‘holy’ means and none of them are pleasant.

Maybe we don’t know what it means to be holy. Could it be for you? For me? What does being in His inner circle require? What will it cost me?

It appears that in accepting God’s gift of salvation, we open it and pick out only what we want. But in not receiving the whole package we limit our relationship with Him.

The adventure, the excitement, the risk is in the third part.

If we maintain control of our lives, then we also must draw from our limited resources which result in many dysfunctional, unhappy, and maybe even hypocritical Christians.

The fruit of the Spirit will not be available to us. After all, it is His fruit fromHis resources.

Let’s give Him our whole heart, our whole being. Let’s take that leap of faith. Let’s go for the whole surrender. Once you do, life will be different. He is calling you to be one of His disciples. How will you respond? Will you take the plunge?

John 12:25  He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Matthew 16:24-26 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Matthew 10:39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

2 Corinthians 5:15…and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

Shepherd of our souls,  help us to hear Your call and yield ourselves completely to Your care.