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Thanks J.D.
All in! Get back in alignment.
Time to leave a deep well.
For His Kingdom and Milwaukee’s Revival,
Jeff in Christ ✝️ 🙏
As Director of Music at my church, I have been choosing different hymns in Our Great Redeemer’s Praise to be a hymn of the month. As an older congregation, this new hymnal has so many new(er) contemporary songs and even some old traditional hymns that we do not know, (or had not sung in a very long time because they were not in the UMH). A few months ago I chose “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” as the hymn of the month even though it was a familiar song for us. I always try to give a backstory, when there is one. Here it is for those who have never heard the backstory for “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”.
I Have Decided to Follow Jesus’ is a Christian hymn originating from India.
About 150 years ago, there was a great revival in Wales. As a result of this, many missionaries came to north-east India to spread the Gospel. The region known as Assam was comprised of hundreds of tribes who were primitive and aggressive head-hunters
Into these hostile and aggressive communities, came a group of missionaries from the American Baptist Missions spreading the message of love, peace and hope in Jesus Christ. Naturally, they were not welcomed. One missionary succeeded in converting a man, his wife, and two children. This man’s faith proved contagious and many villagers began to accept Christianity.
Angry, the village chief summoned all the villagers. He then called the family who had first converted to renounce their faith in public or face execution. Moved by the Holy Spirit, the man said:
“I have decided to follow Jesus.”
Enraged at the refusal of the man, the chief ordered his archers to arrow down the two children. As both boys lay twitching on the floor, the chief asked, “Will you deny your faith? You have lost both your children. You will lose your wife too.”
But the man replied:
“Though no one joins me, still I will follow.”
The chief was beside himself with fury and ordered his wife to be arrowed down. In a moment she joined her two children in death. Now the chief asked for the last time, “I will give you one more opportunity to deny your faith and live.” In the face of death the man said the final memorable lines:
“The cross before me, the world behind me. No turning back.”
He was shot dead like the rest of his family. But with their deaths, a miracle took place. The chief who had ordered the killings was moved by the faith of the man. He wondered, “Why should this man, his wife and two children die for a Man who lived in a far-away land on another continent some 2,000 years ago? There must be some remarkable power behind the family’s faith, and I too want to taste that faith.”
In a spontaneous confession of faith, he declared, “I too belong to Jesus Christ!” When the crowd heard this from the mouth of their chief, the whole village accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior.
The song is based on the last words of Nokseng, a man from Garo tribe of Assam (now Meghalaya and some in Assam), India. It is today the song of the Garo people.
Source: Dr. P.P. Job in ‘Why God Why’
Further research into this song
The formation of these words into a hymn is attributed to the Indian missionary Sadhu Sundar Singh. The melody is also Indian and with the title “Assam” after the region where the text originated. An American hymn editor, William Jensen Reynolds, composed an arrangement that was included in the 1959 Assembly Songbook.
An alternative tradition attributes the hymn to Simon Marak, from Jorhat, Assam.
The hymn comes from the last words of the Garo martyr Nokseng as his family and then he himself died.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for sharing! This remind me John 12:24. I am looking forward to listen to the part of how Jesus delivered him in person when I meet this family in heaven. Thanks again for the sharing!💕
Getting on with the Gospel
Without heart proximity to God, Christianity’s just a religious fling. (Matthew 15:8) Ministry that doesn’t lead to heart-proximity to God is only empty words. (James 1:22) When your heart is truly close to God, your life will radiate His presence and demonstrate His character everywhere you go. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Heart-proximity with God is incompatible with intentional wrongdoing and unrepented sin. (Romans 6:23) Our rebellion pulls our heart away from God. God’s forgiveness draws our heart near to Him. (Mark 1:15) The first step to being truly forgiven for your sin is deep, gut-level honesty with yourself and with God that leads you to real remorse, radical repentance, and full surrender to God’s presence and mercy through Christ. (Acts 3:19)
Heart-proximity with God is the fruit produced by continually surrendering to the promptings and revelations of the Holy Spirit — those directly spoken to your heart and those revealed to you through Scripture. To overflow with the power and presence of the Spirit (John 7:37-39) and be led by the Spirit (Romans 8:15) we must follow and obey God’s desires while denying our own. (Luke 9:23)
Wrongdoing will wreck your heart-proximity with God. Even the smallest sin makes you want to hide your heart from Him. Repentance, forgiveness, and humility will cause your heart to unfold like a flower before Him.
The Bible talks about the fruit of the Spirit, not about the formalities of the Spirit. Christianity is about godly character, not about religious rituals.
Heart-to-heart communication with God isn’t tied to a cell tower. It’s tied to the Cross. Train the meditation of your heart (Psalm 19:14) to follow Christ’s train of thought and to stay always on His train tracks. If you want to see more, God has much more for you to see.
Monuments are built to honor God from a distance, but faith directly encounters and interacts with God in the presence moment. We need to know about the God of the heavens, but we need to experience, surrender to, and obey the God who reveals Himself directly to human hearts today.
An ancient steeple
And an ancient tree.
Which one was made
By the God
Who sets people free?
Thanks J. D. It is a hard text to understand and I confess I still don’t fully understand it. I do understand your last three questions, though. That’s why I always add to our consecration statement “offer my body as a living sacrifice…and sanctuary! I truly desire the Holy Spirit to live in and work out through me. I value your daily encouragement and boldness to proclaim it!
“ … living sacrifice and sanctuary … “ I am so stealing this!
Me too!
I love this realization of interpreting scripture in the vacuum of eternal life, not in terms of time beginning after death, but in the here and now in our heavenly seat as soon as we embrace Jesus as our Lord and Savior!
My fav part today was that Jesus is saying stop asking me to get in the boat…. Come out here with me and walk on the water❤️
NOTE: More great stuff from 1 John today! Thanks, J.D.!!
However, once again there are questions from the passage screaming in my head that remain essentially unaddressed! At least J.D. acknowledged that “Today’s text is hard to understand,” and he continued, “It’s hard to understand the context John is speaking into and the problem he is addressing when he advises against praying for people that commit sins that lead to death. Like you, I wish he said more.”
OK, J.D., we all “wish he said more,” but now I wish YOU had said more! Lol!! You set us up for the difficulty, and then skimmed over that difficulty! You went right to what you felt was the main point of the passage. Once again, I empathize with you, trying to focus on the main and the plain and avoiding rabbit trails that can distract us. You’ve always got time and space issues in a format like this. I do get it, and I appreciate it.
Having said that, in this case, IMHO, leaving the questions unaddressed about what “a sin that does not lead unto death” is, what “a sin that leads to death” is, and what the difference is between them is, leaves in question the main thrust of the passage.
In other words, John seems to indicate that we SHOULD pray for folks committing one category of sins, but NOT the other! So, how do I know for whom to pray and for whom not to pray if I don’t understand the nature of these sins?
Are there so-called “mortal sins,” a category of sins so heinous that they make us incapable of receiving life from the Father, so we shouldn’t waste our time praying for those who have committed them? Is this “the unforgivable sin” of “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit,” or are there others in this category?
OR, is he simply saying that all sin brings death, but if the person isn’t dead yet, if their sin has yet to literally kill them, then there is hope to bring them to eternal life through prayer?
The latter understanding makes the most sense to me, but I don’t know if proper exegesis allows that understanding. Am I bringing my own theological grid and placing it on the text, or is that a legitimate interpretation?
I know it’s not J.D.’s job or purpose to answer all of our/my questions about a given text, and perhaps my brain/heart is the only one asking these particular questions. However, I think the answers to the questions impact the interpretation of this entire passage.
I happen to agree with J.D. about John’s main thrust in this passage, but I think that understanding is hard to defend without at least touching on one’s interpretation of what John means by these phrases.
Again, please don’t hear criticism of J.D. or his writing in what I’m sharing. I love J.D.’s work in general, and this 1 John series in particular. I just have questions that I think others might also be asking.
Thanks, J.D. for being who you are and doing what you do! Blessings!!!
– BRUCE KNIGHT, “Devotional Pursuit,” Thursday, 06/05/2025.
Hello J.D. Earlier this morning, before I listened to the Wake Up Call, I was checking my text messages from a friend who always encourages me each day, and after that, a reel popped up. It was a preacher and he related a story about the song “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”. He said that the song came from India (if I remember correctly) and that a family of a dad a mom and 2 children heard the gospel and “Decided to Follow Jesus”. The chief of the tribe heard of it and brought them before the entire village and told the father that he would have to renounce his belief in this Jesus. The man said, “No. I have decided to follow Jesus. The chief shot his wife and said again, “Now, will you renounce this Jesus?” The man said, “I have decided to follow Jesus”. The chief shot one of the children. Again the chief asked him to renounce Jesus and the man said, “No turning back! I have decided to follow Jesus”. The chief shot the other child and then the father.
Later, the gospel was brought to the village, and because of the faith of the man and his willingness to die and his family with him, the chief believed in Jesus and he and the entire village came to know Jesus and accepted him as their savior.
Then I listened to the Wake Up Call and was amazed that the song you were going to sing was the one I had just heard the story of.
God is so good and I love when He shows us that we are connected with Christians all over the world!
The world behind me, the cross before me. No turning back! No turning back!