If life is a journey, sooner or later we all lose our way. That, my friend, is an inevitable side benefit of being human. Every journey begins with a single step in the right direction, but as life goes on, when we don’t have our eyes fixed on the outcome, it’s all too easy to veer off track. You’ve probably heard it said that when our focus is off by even just one degree over a long enough time, that leads us to places we’d never planned on going.
And unfortunately--we’ve all been there. Some of you saw the title of this article and said, “I want to start walking with Jesus again. I’ve lost my way a little. I want to get back on track following Jesus.”
I am excited for you. Know why? Because Jesus wants to walk with you too. How do I know? Because he told us so.
Sometimes the way back to walking with Jesus is so simple that it almost feels complicated. As a pastor and author, I meet people all the time who know the “right” answers, but for whatever reason, can’t seem to recall them (or live them) in the most essential moments. As a follower of Jesus, I always want to keep the most important things front and center in my life. And there is no greater teaching of Jesus than the Greatest Commandment.
Think about it: if Jesus, the greatest person who ever lived (not to mention our Lord and Savior), told us what the greatest commandment (the most important truth in life) is, then we want to make sure we don’t miss that! So to get back on track walking with Jesus, I want to look at three simple steps that Jesus gave us, right in the Greatest Commandment.
Step 1 – Start Upward
Jesus introduced the Greatest Commandment by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 that we should “love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind.” I call this living upward. Getting your groove back has everything to do with living and loving upward.
Every relationship begins, and is ultimately sustained, by saying “yes.” We need to say yes to Jesus again and respond to Him. God loves you-- always has and always will. Even though you may be off track right now, God’s love for you has not diminished at all.
In order to see transformation happen in your own life, you need to respond to God’s love by returning that love. So the first step back to walking with Jesus is to cultivate upward living by loving God with the totality of who you are.
Step 2 – Go Inward
Not only is it imperative to love God, but through God’s love, we learn how to love ourselves properly.
You see, what happens when we lose our focus on loving God, is we begin to love ourselves in unhealthy ways. We do things we shouldn’t, because we are redefining what self-love looks like. The vertical access, living upward by loving God, is the essential pace-setter for living inward by loving yourself.
When you love yourself without being fully devoted to God, things get messy extraordinarily fast.
You see the only way to properly love yourself is to see yourself through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross teaches us that we are simultaneously more loved than we can ever imagine and also more broken than we would ever care to admit. The cross shows us God’s amazing love because Jesus died for us. But it also shows us the depth of our sin--it’s so bad that Jesus had to die.
And the good news for us is that as we live upward by loving God, the Lord will reorient our self-love so we become increasingly healthy people emotionally.
The final step to getting back on track of walking with Jesus is to live outward by loving others.
As you live upward by responding to God’s love with love for Him, and then you begin to love yourself based on God’s love, the Spirit of God invites you to push outward to love others with this amazing love. God doesn’t want his love to stop with us. But let’s be honest, loving others is incredibly hard.
Why? Because people are messy. And when we lose our way, we don’t want to love messy people. But living upward continually reminds us that God loves us, even in the midst of our messes. And living inward teaches us to love ourselves, even though we are messy. Then living outward directs us to love others, especially when they are messy.
And just like that, in three simple steps, you find yourself, day in and day out, locked into the groove of following Jesus and walking with Him.
It’s that simple: Upward. Inward. Outward.
Photo courtesy: ©Unsplash
Daniel Fusco is the lead pastor of Crossroads Community Church, which has campuses in Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon. He is a conference speaker, a jazz musician, and the author of Honestly. He lives in Washington with his wife, Lynn, and their three children.
Upward, Inward, Outward
Love God. Love Yourself. Love Others.
This book is about discovering together how to understand and live the Greatest Commandment. We’re not after the “art of thinking about God a little differently.” We’re here to uncover the needs God created within us—needs for meaning, intimacy, honesty, humility, justice, compassion, and more—and how he designed us to find those needs fulfilled in him. These three movements—upward, inward, and outward—mirror the Greatest Commandment and help us learn the art of living harmoniously together in a chaotic world.