Could you live like Jesus for a year?

On Sunday I talked about Rev. Ed Dobson, a pastor who literally tried to live like Jesus for an entire year. Following the Jewish customs, laws and trying to mimic the life style patterns of Christ we read in scripture. So, here is a little more thought on Mr. Dobson and this idea of living like Christ, literally. And Click Here for the USA Today article written in January 2009 by Charles Honey.

First of all, let's never forget we are people of The Story. It's a remarkable story. It's God revealing himself through The Story, a story filled with hope and one that gives life. There is no other story that is like this and the greatest blessing is WE CAN CHOOSE to make this story OUR story.

I found what Ed Dobson did for an entire year to be fascinating. You know, what it comes down to (at least in my little mind) is we must model Jesus if we are going to take The Story on. And I beleive we often talk about how and why we need to model Jesus, but how often do we see the modeling of Christ done in our lives? I must admit, I fall way, way short in this.

Now, Dobson took the idea of living like Jesus to a literal extreme, but nonetheless it is a wonderful notion and life to "walk in the shoes" of Christ. My favorite quote from the man who lived like Christ: "I'm getting up every day not worried about what doesn't work; I'm getting up concerned about how do I live out this Jesus stuff."

Wow.

When we truly strive to live like Christ our outlook becomes different. When we truly strive to live like Christ our priorities change. When we truly strive to live like Christ our story is The Story.

Maybe, just maybe we need to push ourselves into a deeper, bigger Jesus life style than we've imagined before. Please, don't hear me saying we should grow our beards out (which would be weird for the women) and start heading to synagogues for prayer each weekend (which is not a bad thought at all), but maybe we haven't ever considered it before because the stories we have been telling have been stories about self and not Christ. When we consider and push ourselves and do whatever we can in our stories to model Christ we begin to take this God revealing, hope filled, life giving story and become concerned of how we are going to live it out.