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.
For more than a year now Wes and I have been working on a book about choosing friends and what those friends should look like. Draft chapters are posted on Substack as articles and you can read chapter one here: Alypius and the Gladiator (and the friends we choose). That one was published on April 24, 2026. Subsequent chapters can be found by scrolling through the God Running Substack profile activity.
The book contends that if you’re a Jesus follower, the friends you choose should be the most Christlike people you can find. And Christlike people have certain identifying attributes. They have a deep abiding love (called khesed in the Bible), they have faces that shine with the spirit of Jesus, they’re people of gratitude, they won’t let their friends suffer alone, and they’ll hold you accountable. In reality, these are attributes of Jesus himself.
Another way we can describe Jesus is found in 1 Corinthians 13: Jesus is love, therefore Jesus is patient and kind; Jesus does not envy or boast; Jesus is not arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on his own way; Jesus is not irritable or resentful; Jesus does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Jesus describes himself as “gentle and lowly in heart.” (Matthew 11:29)
I love all these attributes of Jesus. And sometime during the seven years I wrote the Love Like Jesus book, I started trying to grow into a person who shared these attributes of Jesus.
But,
there’s one attribute I overlooked somehow. And that attribute is the way Jesus was, and is:
Relentless.
While Jesus walked the earth, he was relentless in the way he loved God and loved people, even when he was heavily criticized for loving and befriending sinners. He was relentless in the way he healed people, even when he was criticized for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus relentlessly freed people from demons even when they said he freed people from demons by the power of the prince of demons. Jesus relentlessly shared God’s love and truth even when people tried to throw him off a cliff and even though people tried to stone him. (Matthew 9:10-13, Matthew 12:24, Luke 4:28-30, John 8:56-59)
Jesus relentlessly loved people.
I don’t know how I missed this. Over my lifetime I’ve spent years studying successful leaders and successful people, and the attribute of relentlessness is always present. Jim Collins talks about it in his classic book Good to Great. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes ever, has been described by coaches, teammates, and opponents as relentless. Almost anyone who has succeeded at almost anything at the highest levels is found to have this quality of relentlessness. So it’s not surprising Jesus had that same attribute when it came to his mission to communicate the love of God to the world, and to seek and save the lost, and to give abundant life, and to give his life as a ransom.
Jesus loved relentlessly right up until the end.
As a follower of Jesus, I need to love like that too.
“Lord have mercy on me and on the dear person reading this right now. Please transform us into the likeness of Your Son Jesus in every way. Help us to love relentlessly the way Jesus loved relentlessly. Pour Your love into us by the Holy Spirit.
“In Jesus’ name we ask this of You.
“Amen.”
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.
