The glory of God is the “heavy weight”, as it’s referred to in the original language, of the revelation of God’s reputation or character of love!

Jesus wept is the shortest verse in the entire Bible. Yet, have you ever wondered why He wept? Well, just consider all that Jesus was taking in at the moment.

Did you hear what was arising out of Martha’s heart? She’s expressing respect mingled with an honest frustration that essential says, “Where were you?”!

How does Jesus respond to families grieving the loss of a loved one?

What could God possibly be trying to teach us as parents through the experience of this journey with Abraham and Isaac, by a request that seems so cruel?

When the love of Christ is the Why for your life, then what’s the fourth step He leads your life into?

Notice Jesus has already gone before these disciples to reach the hearts of the people, but now He decides to enter their environment, their space, their work space for a better, more effective platform to reach the people.

Peter was fine when Jesus was doing His preaching and teaching thing from his boat, but now He wants to enter his profession and tell him how to do his job. You see, once Jesus gets in your space He has some things to say about how things are done in there.

Notice Jesus has already gone before these disciples to reach the hearts of the people, but now He decides to enter their environment, their space, their work space for a better, more effective platform to reach the people.

When the love of Christ is the Why for your life, then what’s the third step He leads your life into? Well, if you want to find out, then Come with me to the shore of the Sea of Galilee as the water gently splashes on our feet while we stand in the midst of a crowd that have pressed together to hear Jesus teach.

Notice the first move wasn’t to take this precious harvest of 3000 newly baptized people and pack them into the nearest auditorium their in Jerusalem and call themselves a mega-church. Rather they were immediately placed into smaller gatherings that met from house to house as their primary gathering for church life.

The setting was away from the large gathering of the crowds and into the small gathering within a home. The disciples didn’t merely have a personal, one-on-one abiding relationship with Jesus. But they also learned and did life together as followers of Jesus!

When the love of Christ is the Why for your life, then what’s the second step He leads your life into?

When the love of Christ is revealed to you as the Why for your life, then what’s the first step He leads your life into?

This first step on the discipleship pathway is an exploratory, seeking and experiential step. And one thing you’ll notice at every step in Jesus’ pathway to disciple-making is it’s highly relational.

We deceive ourselves into thinking our way is better, while in truth we are slipping down the path to self-destruction. And this breaks the heart of God because He created us to flourish as human beings by living in the rhythm of love to God, one another and everything in the environment around us.

Paul is saying, “If you want to know what’s driving us, what’s motivating us, what’s pushing us, what’s moving us and ruling our hearts; if you want to know what’s getting us up in the morning, it’s the compelling love of Christ!”

What is the compelling why that drives your life? 

Jesus being in our midst until the end was His explicit promise in Matthew 28:20, which says, “… I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. Matthew 28:20 NKJV. Knowing that Jesus is with us in our midst through the Spirit is a strong encouragement, yet it is also a challenge.

Just ask any human being on the planet and they’ll tell you that the thing most human beings fear, next to speaking in front of their classmates in middle school, is death. It is fear that has paralyzed so many people from being able to truly live and it is fear that causes so many people to be easily manipulated  and controlled by those with power.