God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
Below you’ll find another chapter from the book Wes Beyer and I are writing. The previous chapter can be found here: “The Friends We Choose: A Person Who Will Challenge Us“. The working title for the book is The Jesus Shortcut: How to Become More Like Jesus (in the shortest possible time). Wes and I are wide open to your suggestions, and especially any stories you may have about people who were influenced for Jesus by their friends.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)
Friends Who Don’t Allow Us to Suffer Alone
Some years ago, while I was relatively young, I was pursuing my degree in Fire Administration. One night after a class in Portland, I was crossing the street to go to the Lloyd Center Mall. Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe. I honestly thought I walked into an invisible hazardous materials cloud of some kind. The only problem with that theory was, nobody else around me was having a problem. Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital for a double bypass operation.
What happened next is something that changed me for the rest of my life. As you might expect, my family—Kathy, Gabe, and Nate—were there for me. But also, while I was recovering in the hospital and for the next few months after I was home, many, many brothers and sisters in Christ came to support me in my suffering. So many came, I lost count. I’ve never experienced anything like that since (mostly because I haven’t had any life threatening issues since).
I was suffering, but these brothers and sisters weren’t going to let me suffer alone.
Their presence and practical help ministered to me physically and emotionally. But they also had some kind of deep profound impact on my soul that remains with me to this day.
Jesus and Our Suffering
Relationships with loving people fuel us, and support from those loving people during times of suffering make an enormous difference. Beside all the accounts of Jesus healing people who were enduring suffering, there’s the way we suffer in our sins. And because we suffer in our sins, Jesus came to help us. Jesus endured the cross. Jesus endured the cross because of how He feels about you and how He feels about me. We suffer in our sins and Jesus suffered on the cross to redeem us.
Very importantly, a big part of belonging to a group of Jesus followers who relate to each other in the way we’re describing in this book means we don’t let each other suffer alone. We support and strengthen each other, we walk through suffering with each other. When we’re suffering, we fix our eyes on Jesus’ face shining on us. And, when we’re suffering, we fix our eyes on the faces of those who support us with the love of Jesus. This is hugely important to our enduring suffering (Hebrews 12:2). And it’s an essential attribute of the friends we’re looking for.
“There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).
Find that friend. Even better, find a group of such friends.
Notes:
Photo of a man comforting his friend by howtogoto, from iStock
The Love Like Jesus Book
Available on Google Play Books and on Amazon!
Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus)
Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others. Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including:
- Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God’s love to others.
- How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman’s love languages (and how you can too).
- The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ’s extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions.
- How to respond to critics the way Jesus did.
- How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did.
- How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat).
- How Jesus didn’t love everyone the same (and why you shouldn’t either).
- How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself–he even napped–and why you should do the same.
- How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end.
With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God’s definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too.
A life of loving like Jesus. (Kindle, hardcover, and paperback now available on Amazon and Google Play Books.)
We also recently released the audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Jonathan St. John. It’s available on the following platforms:
It’s also available on Amazon, Hoopla, Audiobooksnow, Chirp, Libro, Overdrive, and virtually everywhere audiobooks are offered.
