Discovering Jesus

I have always claimed to be a follower of Christ, but the question that was running through my head was, do I even know who it is I am following? I began to realize that much of what Jesus taught I did not fully understand and therefore was not comprehending it. This led me to the question, do I love Jesus enough to claim to be one of His followers? Do I love Jesus as He loves me? After all how can you truly love someone if you really do not know who they are? When you love your children, your spouse or a friend it's easy to recognize this feeling because they are there with you, you interact with them. You know what makes them happy or sad, you know their likes and dislikes because you desire to know them. This type of a relationship doesn't happen overnight, it takes time. The more your relationship grows the stronger your bond becomes; and if in life you become separated, the love between you remains. The same analogy applies to God and it begins with a desire or curiosity to know just who He is. The frustrating part is that in an attempt to discover Jesus we will pick up the bible only to put it down again because we did not know where to begin. The sheer volume of books, chapters and verses within the bible can be overwhelming. Even if you started with the New Testament and began to read each of the four gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John you may have found it difficult to comprehend what was written. The words that Jesus spoke are not always easy to understand and don't always make sense. This is a problem I faced time and time again throughout my life, only to give up trying. Still the need to know Him was always there. It wasn't until I reached a low point in my life that I made the decision that I would not fall away from my faith again. I needed to know who it was that I had chosen to follow and why it was that my prayers seemed to be falling on deaf ears. Surely I could get to a point where I had a relationship with God that could not be broken; but in my quest to know Jesus where would I start? I chose the Gospel of John to discover Jesus. The Apostle John was not only one of Jesus' disciples but is said to have been the closest to Him. Also, John only wrote down what he could personally testify to (John 21:24). Who better to discover Jesus than from the Apostle John? I needed to know what the words Jesus spoke meant, why He came and why many who claimed to be close to God would refuse to believe Jesus' message. But most of all I needed all of this to make sense to me as I desired a relationship with Him. This book contains 21 chapters to coincide with the book of John. I have taken the words of the Apostle John and put my own dialog to it making it easier to understand. The words of Jesus I have left as they were written and explained to the best of my ability what I believe Jesus said, what He meant and how it applies to our lives today.