Jesus was an interesting dude. He was in fact; God in human form, sent here to show us a walking, talking example of what God is like. And yet, he didn’t do the things that you would expect God to do.

Most people would expect a holy, righteous and perfect God to want to hang out with people who had their acts together. Yet Jesus spent the majority of his time hanging out with sinners and outcasts. It would be a natural thing to think that God would want people to worship him and put him on a pedestal, and yet Jesus was the model servant. It would be safe to assume that God would want to demand that people listen to him and do as he did. But Jesus wasn’t demanding at all. Instead he offered a simple invitation.

“Come, follow me.”

Those three words teach us so much about what Jesus is all about. He doesn’t ask or require that we get our act together before we come to him. He doesn’t have a list of rules or qualifications that we have to meet in order to be his disciple. Instead, he simply offers us an invitation to follow him, because he knows that firsthand experience with him has the potential to be the most life-changing thing we’ve ever had.

We can learn a lot from Jesus in this regard. There is a world full of people out there who want something more. They know they need something, but they aren’t sure what it is. We know what they need is Jesus. But so often we try and get people to change their beliefs and behaviors so that they line up with our own – and people get turned off. Why would they act the way we do, when they’ve never seen the reason why we do? The truth is they won’t.

So what if instead of trying to convince people why and how to change, we did something so much simpler. What if we simply offered them an invitation to come and meet Jesus with us and through us. Nothing has the power to impact people more than the story of how following Jesus has changed our lives. It should be why we worship, it should be what we preach, and it should cause us to do all that we can to invite others to come and follow him as well.

So who can you invite to come and follow Jesus through the story of how he has changed you? How has following him changed your life, your family, your friendships, your outlook on life – and who needs to know he can do the same for them? Invite someone to follow Jesus with you – you’ll be surprised what a simple invitation can do.