“Some journeys take us far from home. Some adventures lead us to our destiny.” – C. S. Lewis

The word “journey” is a helpful metaphor when considering Christianity. Christianity is a journey, not an event; it is the process of growing closer to God over time. The journey of faith is a lifelong adventure that includes learning, growth, and transformation. It has highs and lows. You will go through valleys and mountaintops. You will learn things in the valleys you will never learn on the mountaintops, and vice versa.

But like any journey, we need to focus on the process of getting there as well as the arrival. A journey implies changes, transitions, challenges, and adventures. Like any journey, we want to know the route and expect smooth travel without drama or anxiety. But the Christian life may be anything but smooth and we should be open to meeting God in the unexpected. When we look at our Christian walk as a journey, and as we learn to trust our navigator, we are less likely to resist change and challenge.

There are people who enjoy an adventure on their own, but most people like travel companions on their journey. Maybe they are flying with us to Los Angeles where they get off the plane as we continue on to Hawaii. They were a big help as you juggled all your luggage through the airport and helped pass the time on the flight to California. But they won’t be there to talk on the flight to Hawaii or help with the luggage when your plane lands. Regardless of where you are in life’s journey, God is always present in your life, including the good and challenging times, and by your side, supporting you throughout your entire path; signifying His constant presence and unwavering support in every situation.  “Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you” (Deuteronomy 31:8).

Sometimes, when we travel, just like physical luggage, our emotional burdens can weigh us down, hindering our journey in life. However, through faith in God, we can release these burdens and find rest in Him. Matthew 11:28 says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest,” an invitation to surrender them to God for healing and release.

The biggest and most significant journey story in the Bible is Jesus leaving heaven and coming to earth for our sake, to live and die and be raised again so that we can live in Him. Jesus asks us to journey with Him. The Holy Spirit works in us so we can grow into Jesus’ image on the journey and so we can reach the journey’s end.

Turning to God is a journey and lifestyle, not an event. Being moldable, changeable, and influenceable each day helps us stay close to God along that journey.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve encountered on your spiritual path?
2. How does your faith guide your daily decisions and actions?

 Summary: Any retelling of the life of Jesus Christ will fall far short of doing it justice. Learning the facts of Jesus’ life and ministry will whet your appetite to learn more. Understanding Christ is the foundation for understanding true Christianity, which is believing and living by Christ’s teachings and striving to imitate His perfect life.

As Christians, we are called to imitate Jesus in all aspects of our life. It has spurred an often-asked question of “What would Jesus do?” in any given situation. While being completely like Jesus is way above our pay grade, some specific traits of Jesus can help us imitate Him in our own lives. It is no different than learning the core competencies of our profession.  If you are a firefighter, you must learn how to fight fires. Accountants must master the bookkeeping skills involved with accounting, and teachers must master the skills to enable children to learn.

 When Jesus called His twelve disciples and began to train them to make more disciples, He trained them in specific areas, like a master training a group of apprentices, so they could carry on the work that He started. Then, as now, a disciple must develop the competencies of Jesus by becoming like Him on the outside. He knew he couldn’t teach them everything, so He focused on some key competencies that still apply to us today.

Jesus’ time with His disciples and on earth was short. He knew that He must invest His time wisely. He knew he must prepare His key followers for what lay ahead. He must reproduce His influence, teaching, and ministry. So He withdrew from the crowds to personally teach His closest and key followers. Jesus taught us to invest in others, who in turn would invest in others, who in turn… invested in us

From the beginning, Jesus told the disciples that He would make them into something different: “Come, follow me,…and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Their occupation of catching fish changed into a mission of fishing for people. At each step along the way, Jesus taught them to share with others, connect people to God, and minister to those in need. Those competencies include a deep personal relationship with God through prayer and Bible study, actively sharing the Gospel with others, demonstrating love and compassion, living a life aligned with God’s teachings, serving others, and actively seeking to grow in their faith, essentially, embodying the character of Christ through daily actions and decisions.

It is not easy to model our lives after Jesus, but we can learn to make disciples as Jesus made. After all, if we obey everything Jesus commanded, we, too, will learn to replicate the process by which we became His disciples.  It is a natural process: we follow Jesus, Jesus changes us, and—as we follow the one who spent His time making disciples—we, too, commit to make disciples as He did. Loving people as Jesus loved people through service means that we want to see people come to faith in Jesus and live as He did.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is the most practical way of adopting Jesus’s lifestyle this week?
2. If we want more of God’s peace, we need to adopt Jesus’s lifestyle. Agree or disagree, and why?

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are[e] being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!  So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”  – 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

The idiom “seeing is believing” has been passed down from generation to generation. It is used in conversation when people are more likely to accept something as true if they can see it with their own eyes, essentially implying that visual evidence is necessary for belief. It makes sense because our society is based on proof, evidence, and verifiable research.

It can be hard for us to believe something we have not seen, felt, or witnessed for ourselves, especially when it seems unbelievable. Thomas is a good example. In John 20, Jesus appears to His disciples, except for Thomas, after His crucifixion and resurrection. When the disciples tell Thomas what they have seen, he does not believe them.  So the other disciples tell him, “…We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.” (John 20:25).  Thomas had a self-imposed criterion for believing in Jesus’ resurrection of not only seeing but also touching. In other words, Thomas needed that visual, tangible, observable physical proof.

Hebrews 11 1 says, “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.” (Hebrews 11:1). By definition, faith is not talking about, thinking about, or even celebrating God’s truth. It is the process of adapting your behavior, your decisions and ultimately, your whole lifestyle to align with what God has asked you to do — without needing to see the evidence it will all work out.

Faith in things that cannot be seen is the belief that something is true even though the physical senses cannot perceive it. It is the conviction that what is hoped for is real, even if it is not visible.  After showing His wounds and scars to Thomas so that he would believe, Jesus stressed the importance of having faith. Jesus said to him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me” (John 20:29). This belief in things “not seen” is easier said than done, especially when it comes to the great unseen of God and His promises.

“And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness” (Colossians 2:6-7).

Faith increases through a genuine relationship with God.  Study what the Bible reveals about faith.

Discussion Questions:

1. Faith is the hope of things unseen. What are those unseen things and how does faith impact them?
2. Does God still reveal His will in specific ways or is He content to leave a lot of our choices up to us?

Summary: To be successful as a Christian means to live a life aligned with God’s will, prioritizing obedience to His teachings, actively demonstrating love for others, and using your gifts and talents to serve God and further His kingdom rather than focusing on worldly measures of success like wealth or fame; essentially, it’s about faithfully following Jesus and living a life that reflects His values.

What does success mean to you? Most people measure success in financial terms. Thus, most people believe that the most successful people are the 2,781 billionaires in the world. But is that all there is to success? From a Biblical perspective, attaining wealth isn’t the ultimate goal, though it’s not bad. Some of the most remarkable people from the Old Testament had great wealth. But how should Christians measure success?

The way God measures success is different than the way culture defines success. Based on what Jesus said,  success is measured by how well you love Him and love others. “The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40).  He told His followers, “your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35).  Romans 8:29 says, “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son…” That means if you walk like, talk like, work like, live like, and love like Jesus, that’s success in His eyes.

Jesus is teaching us that our love for God and our love for others are deeply interconnected. This means that every other commandment extends or expresses these two foundational principles. Our ability to love others well stems from our relationship with God. The deeper our love for Him, the more naturally we will love others, because we begin to see them as He does.

Loving others also authenticates the genuineness of our love for God. The Apostle John writes, “If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar…” (1 John 4:20). This verse underscores that our love for God cannot be separated from our love for others. If we truly love God, it will show itself in how we treat those around us.

 To become like Jesus and to be successful as a Christian, you’ve got to become and stay connected. Connected to God and connected to others. If you want to grow deeper with God, get on mission with Jesus. Do more than go to Bible studies, read books, or listen to podcasts. Apply what you’re learning about God by loving people far from God. Your personal growth should always be for the sake of others and the cause of Christ.

 To love God and love others is only possible when we understand that He loved us first. We don’t naturally love God the most. We don’t naturally love others like we do ourselves. We’re all wrapped up in ourselves, our lives, our agendas, and our priorities, yet God keeps loving us. His love never changes.

0Discussion Questions:

1. What does it mean to love God?
2. What does it mean to you to reflect God’s love to others? What are some practical ways for you to give others a taste of what the love of God is like?

“Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.” – 1 John 2:6.

The goal of the believer is to become more like Jesus. But is being Christlike attainable? In our strength it is clearly not attainable, but God has given us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us, to change us from within. Jesus told us that His faithful disciples would imitate Him: “throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

But a Christian learns early on that it is impossible to live like Jesus. Jesus was both fully human and fully God, and performed many acts that no one else has. Jesus is the incarnation of God in human flesh, the only one to live a sinless life and offered Himself as a sacrifice for all sin and evil. Jesus showed unconditional love and treated everyone with compassion and respect. He conquered death, rose again, and ascended to heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand. It is impossible to imitate all that.

Loving Jesus leads to obeying Him, allowing us to reflect Him in our lives, but it will never make us exactly like Him. But you can become the best version of yourself with God’s help and in a God-honoring way. The first step toward being the best version of you in 2025 is understanding that God’s vision for your life includes His desire that you become more and more like Christ. Jesus was not only your Savior but also your example in life.

Jesus’ whole life was an example we ought to follow, but to do so, we must soak it up. This is one reason that reading Scripture is so critical. It illuminates the path so we can follow in His footsteps. But some days, it is harder than others to act like Jesus. We get tired and irritable. The car breaks down at the most inopportune time. The baby doesn’t want to sleep. The good news is we don’t have to be perfect for people to see our Savior in us.

If we want to grow to be more like Jesus, we must understand Him. This necessitates learning about what God wants from us and allowing Jesus to be our teacher. We should know what sets Him apart. We need to grasp what motivated Him. We need to witness the ways He responded to people around Him. This requires that we become students of the New Testament.

What we need more of in the Christian life is a vision of Jesus Christ, of the One who was crucified on our behalf. As the eyes of our heart—our heart-seeing—remain on Him and are captivated by Him, we will become like Him. Here is the simple truth at the heart of God’s work of renewal: Continual, deepening, remarkable encounters with Jesus.

 Nothing compares with getting to know the God who knows us. He seeks to be known, for He has revealed Himself in nature and Scripture.

Discussion Questions:

1. Is being like Jesus feasible and what are some practical steps to being more like Him this week?

“Following Christ isn’t something that can be done halfheartedly or on the side. It is not a label we can display when it is useful. It must be central to everything we do and are.” ― Francis Chan, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God.

A pastor shared a story about how he was in front of his church working on landscaping when an elderly woman walked by and asked him, “Are you a follower of Jesus?” The pastor stopped what he was doing to engage the woman and said, “I am a Christian.” She paused and said, “I didn’t ask you that.” The pastor assumed she wanted his qualifications: “I go to and preach in church every week, I have a degree in theology which enables me to read scripture in the original Greek and Hebrew, my grandfather was a well-known preacher in these parts.” The woman listened intently and then said, “You may be a religious person, but that does not make you a follower of Jesus,” then she walked away.

So, what does it mean to follow Jesus? The word follower has changed over the years.  The word “follower” has evolved in our world. Nowadays, it implies a casual, social media-type relationship that doesn’t require much commitment. But when Jesus said “follow me” in Matthew 4:19, He meant something completely different. He wasn’t interested in likes and comments.

While following Jesus doesn’t mean physically following Him around, it does mean turning from living your own life and choosing to live a new life with Jesus in charge. Being a Christ follower goes far beyond saying “I’m a believer” or identifying as a Christian. It’s about having a personal relationship with Jesus that radically transforms your life: “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Following Jesus means loving Him with all your heart and reflecting His love and compassion toward others. It also means studying His Word and seeking opportunities to share Jesus in everyday conversations. It means to trust Him even when the road gets bumpy or uncertain. It means every choice you make mirrors His character, and when He stretches you by leading you outside your comfort zone, you understand that there is a purpose behind it.   

Following Jesus is more than a call to attend church on Easter or keep a Bible on a bookshelf. It’s a call to become like Him. To think how He thought, to live like He lived, and to treat others in light of His sacrifice for them. Following Jesus encompasses living your life according to Jesus’ teachings in every aspect, including your actions, thoughts, and interactions with others, not just participating in a weekly religious gathering.

“Jesus says, ‘I want you to follow me so fully, so intensely, so enduringly that all other attachments in your life look weak by comparison’” – Timothy Keller.

Discussion Questions:

1. What does following Jesus mean in practical life?
2. In what ways can we be better at following Jesus? 

“You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light” -= Psalm 18:28 (NIV).

Technology is everywhere and a part of every aspect of our lives. The Bible never states whether specific technologies are inherently good or bad. Still, it does hold Christians to a biblically grounded morality and engagement with the world around us. We must think wisely about how we use these innovative tools.

Technology today is evolving at a rapid pace, enabling faster change and progress, causing an acceleration of the rate of change. In 2025, people must prepare today for an imminent world in which AI is everywhere and acting autonomously on people’s behalf while enhancing productivity and revolutionizing how businesses approach problem-solving, customer engagement, and creative processes. It’s a brave new world with limitless possibilities. This explains why people today believe that humans have evolved so much and are capable of so much more.  Some people wonder if our science and technology made God obsolete.

The more we understand about the cosmos, the more apparent it is that there is a Designer. At one time, science thought the cell was a gooey blob. Now we know that it is filled with sophisticated molecular machines. There are more of these machines on the tip of your finger than all the machines humans have made in the history of the world. When we see a city full of machines, we never think it renders people obsolete. We recognize that intelligent people are required to design and build all those machines, which is more evidence of a great designer. The bottom line is technology has not diminished our need for God. We don’t need God any less or more today because we have always needed God.

“They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” – Romans 1:19-20

We need the repentance He gives, the wisdom He reveals, and the healing He supplies. We need the grace that He gives, the mercy that He offers, and the justice that He delivers. We need the purpose that He provides, the faithfulness that He exhibits, and the perseverance that He imparts. In short, we need Him because all things are from Him, by Him, through Him, to Him, and for Him.

People needed Him thousands of years ago just as much as we need Him today. Even with all the advancement, sin still exists, and as long as sin exists, we need God.

Francis Chan said, “The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t want Him most of the time.”

Discussion Questions:

1. What are the key areas of life where we must rely on God for guidance and strength?”
2. “What are some situations where you’ve personally felt the need for God’s love and support?” 

“ Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”But Jesus replied, “We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.” – Mark 1:35-38.

Prayer is a conversation with God—a space to share your questions, dreams, hopes, and fears. Prayer allows you to unload your concerns to God, inviting His guidance and support. Prayer knows no bounds and can happen anywhere. If life’s challenges feel overwhelming, prayer can make a difference.  We think of prayer as speaking to God, but if it’s real communication, we have to give God a chance to speak, inspire, heal, guide, forgive, and help us. It is a time to focus on God rather than other things that cloud our minds and engage in a conversation with the Lord.

Extraverts who have no trouble talking to anybody find praying to God difficult. Maybe we think that our prayers just aren’t good enough to warrant taking up God’s time. Maybe our prayers lack structure and tend to be a stream of consciousness. Or our prayers lack eloquent phrases sprinkled with relevant Bible verses. Or we may be convinced that God is sovereign over everything, including my circumstances, so why do we need to pray when it is in complete control?

Luke 11:1 says, “Once Jesus was in a certain place praying. As he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Jesus had just finished praying, apparently in the presence of His disciples. Eager to be like Jesus, they asked that He teach them to pray. Notice two things about their request: First, they, too, desired to communicate with God through prayer, and second, they knew they needed guidance.

Although prayer may be as simple as just talking to God, it is also a learned skill; it takes time, work, and practice. The disciples were with Jesus day in and day out. Of all the things they could have asked Him to teach them — how to heal, teach, or perform extraordinary miracles — they asked how to pray. Jesus gave the disciples (and us) the Lord’s Prayer to teach them. There, Jesus breaks down the essence of Christian living, including a very clear example of how to pray.

Prayer is personal, like our relationship with the Almighty through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. Prayer is also a privilege, allowing us 24/7 access to our heavenly Father, made possible only by the sacrifice of His Son on the cross for our sins. Remember, the Lord is much more concerned with the attitude of our hearts than the actual words from our lips. Life is complicated, but our prayer lives need not be.

Discussion Questions:

1. Is prayer a challenging discipline for you? Why or why not?
2. Why do you think people struggle with prayer today? What obstacles keep us from taking everything to God?  
3. What is your motivation for talking to God?