Millions of people all over the globe profess a belief in God, but out of all of those people far fewer follow God. There is a big difference between simply believing in God and actually following him. That difference is the subject of this week’s article.

Believing in God

If you ask a person if he or she believes in God they might answer “yes,” but what exactly do they mean by the term believing in God? Or what type of god do they believe in? Many of them do not live as if they know God.

There are those who believe in some form of higher power, or creative force which created the universe, but they do not live as if he is the center of their universe. This is because they don’t believe in a personal God.

These particular believers are mostly deists. The type of god they believe in is a distant god who is unconcerned with his creation. He certainly would not have come down to earth to die for us. Therefore they stop at belief because there is no reason to follow a distant god.

Sure, there is something bigger out there, they say, but what does that mean for me? If anything, living a good life should satisfy this god if it turns out they are mistaken and he actually does care about us.

Belief as a Christian

Some of the people who believe in God might profess to be Christians, but they do not live as we would expect Christians to live.

These are the people I want to focus on in this article. Jesus, quoting Isaiah, put it this way:

⁸ “‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me (Matthew 15:8 ESV)

Like those we discussed before, these particular Christians fall into the “I’ll be a good person” fallacy. They might believe Jesus is God, and they might think that Jesus’ teachings are good moral lessons which they try to live by, but they don’t necessarily believe in giving him their whole hearts and souls. He might be a part of who they are, but he is not at the center of their lives.

These Christians believe in God, but they do not follow God. Jesus went further than calling us to follow good moral lessons, he called us to give our lives over to God.

Following God

While believing is about knowing and acknowledging there is a God, following God is about having a relationship with him. Having belief is one thing, even the demons believe and shudder,¹ but following Jesus is another thing altogether. The demons believe but they do not follow.

Belief starts in the head when you realize there is a God. However, following comes from the heart when you turn your life over to him. When belief travels from the head to the heart you become a follower of God and not just a knower of God.

Belief can be a one-time declaration, but following is a lifestyle. Belief is the beginning of the process, but it shouldn’t end there because following Jesus is a lifelong journey.

Following God means total surrender to Christ, and to surrender to Christ means to obey him. This is the sticking point for many people. They do not like the word obey, but Jesus himself said “if you love me, you will keep my commands.”²

Jesus spoke many times about the cost of following him, we covered that in the “Counting the Cost” series of articles. He told us to pick up our cross and follow him.³ He told us the world would hate us for following him.⁴ He was not talking about complacent belief, he was talking about living according to his word.

Just believing in Jesus does not bring hatred from the world, but following him when it puts us at odds with new cultural norms often brings on the scorn of others. We all need to examine ourselves to see if we are merely believers, or if we are followers.

Do we live our lives in such a way that people who look at us see something different in us, or do we look like the rest of the world? When we live in relationship with and in obedience to Jesus, people should see something in us they don’t see in those who are of the world. Looking at us should make them wonder what we have that they are missing.

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1. See James 2:19 ↩︎
2. John 14:15 ESV ↩︎
3. See Matthew 16:24 ↩︎
4. See John 15:18 ↩︎