When I was a young new believer in Jesus Christ and new to the church that I would soon join and I heard the new young pastor there preach in an expository fashion, which kind of preaching I'd been needing even though I couldn't have articulated that back then, I told God, "I will follow this man all the rest of my life." This pastor later "discipled" me in my newfound faith, and he baptized me in the Salt River northeast of Phoenix, Arizona, because I asked to be baptized, having only been baptized as an infant and wanted to profess in a public way my adult allegiance to Jesus, my Savior and Lord. This pastor and I prayed together, studied the Bible together. I confessed my sins to him. He officiated at our wedding a couple of years later. My new bride and I did things with him and his bride and his young family. I watched how he treated his wife and children, and I tried my best to follow his model as a husband and a father with my wife and our children. I loved his verse by verse preaching through the books of the Bible, although he took some flack sometimes from members of our congregation who preferred topical and "feel good" sermons. Years later when we had moved away, and I was now a leader in the church we joined, I realized that I couldn't remember a single sermon that our former pastor had preached, but I did remember all the ways that I'd watched him try to "imitate" Jesus and realized that I had, in fact, built my own walk of faith on what I'd seen him do in all those formative years. So, when I read what the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ Jesus," I know exactly what he meant.
And I think that you've just inspired a post that I now feel moved to write on my own blog. Thank you!
Thank you Scott
When I was a young new believer in Jesus Christ and new to the church that I would soon join and I heard the new young pastor there preach in an expository fashion, which kind of preaching I'd been needing even though I couldn't have articulated that back then, I told God, "I will follow this man all the rest of my life." This pastor later "discipled" me in my newfound faith, and he baptized me in the Salt River northeast of Phoenix, Arizona, because I asked to be baptized, having only been baptized as an infant and wanted to profess in a public way my adult allegiance to Jesus, my Savior and Lord. This pastor and I prayed together, studied the Bible together. I confessed my sins to him. He officiated at our wedding a couple of years later. My new bride and I did things with him and his bride and his young family. I watched how he treated his wife and children, and I tried my best to follow his model as a husband and a father with my wife and our children. I loved his verse by verse preaching through the books of the Bible, although he took some flack sometimes from members of our congregation who preferred topical and "feel good" sermons. Years later when we had moved away, and I was now a leader in the church we joined, I realized that I couldn't remember a single sermon that our former pastor had preached, but I did remember all the ways that I'd watched him try to "imitate" Jesus and realized that I had, in fact, built my own walk of faith on what I'd seen him do in all those formative years. So, when I read what the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ Jesus," I know exactly what he meant.
And I think that you've just inspired a post that I now feel moved to write on my own blog. Thank you!
https://themjkxn.substack.com/p/be-imitators-of-me