0
0
You prayed the prayer on a Sunday. By Tuesday morning you are standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a very specific kind of panic: nobody gave you the plan.
You half expected to feel sent somewhere. Instead you have a normal day — work, a phone full of texts, laundry in the dryer — and a question you are a little embarrassed to type into a search bar. What am I actually supposed to do?
Here is the part almost nobody mentions. The first people who followed Jesus had the same problem, and the Gospels record exactly how much information He handed them when He sent them out. It is far less than you would expect. And once you see it, the pressure you are feeling right now starts to come off.
The Question Under the Question
When someone asks how to follow Jesus when they do not know what to do, they are almost never asking for a five-year plan. They are asking something smaller and more honest: am I doing this right, and how would I know?
Underneath that sits a quieter fear — that you will drift. That in three weeks this will feel like one more thing you started and could not keep, and you will be back where you were, only more disappointed in yourself.
So you go looking for the whole map before you take a single step. It feels responsible. It is actually the thing that keeps most people standing still.
Twice, Jesus Gave Directions. Both Times He Stopped Early.
Twice in the Gospels, Jesus sends followers into a town with step-by-step directions to something they have not laid eyes on yet. Both accounts are worth reading slowly, because both stop sooner than you or I would have written them.
The first is the week He rides into Jerusalem. Mark records it: “Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him” (Mark 11:2).
That is the entire briefing. Go to the village. There will be an animal. Untie it. No explanation of what it is for. No mention of the crowd, the palm branches, or the week that is coming.
The second is the night before the cross. Two disciples ask where to prepare the Passover meal, and the answer is almost comically small: “Go ye into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water: follow him” (Mark 14:13). Luke records the same instruction — “follow him into the house where he entereth in” (Luke 22:10). Matthew’s account of the same evening keeps it even shorter: “Go into the city to such a man” (Matthew 26:18).
Sit with the shape of that instruction for a second. It is not “follow me.” It is follow him — a stranger, carrying water, for one stretch of one street. Obedience that night looked like walking behind somebody whose name they never learned, because that was the whole of what they needed in order to end up in the right room by dinner.
He Told Them What to Say, Not Where It Ended
There is one more detail in the colt story, and it is the one that moved me most. Jesus does not tell them why they need the animal. He tells them what to say if someone stops them: “And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him” (Mark 11:3).
That is the whole preparation. Not the purpose. Not the outcome. One line for the one objection they were going to hit.
And they hit it. Luke writes: “And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him” (Luke 19:33-34). The sentence they were given turned out to be exactly the sentence they needed, and nothing more was required of them.
If you have been waiting to understand the plan before you start, this is your permission slip. The people closest to Jesus were routinely given one step and one answer. They were never given the overview.
Three of the Six Accounts End on the Same Sentence
Those two errands are written up six times across the Gospels. Three of those six accounts close with almost identical words.
- “And his disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found as he had said unto them” (Mark 14:16).
- “And they went, and found as he had said unto them” (Luke 22:13).
- “And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them” (Luke 19:32).
Found. Not understood in advance. Not were shown the plan and agreed to it. They walked with partial information and discovered that the information was true on arrival. Mark even keeps the small, strange, physical detail of it: they “found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met” (Mark 11:4).
It is a pattern, not a one-off. When the temple tax came due, Peter got the same kind of sending: “go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money” (Matthew 17:27). Again the promise is not an explanation. It is thou shalt find.
That is the rhythm of following, and it is the opposite of how we are trained to make decisions. The confirmation came after the walking, not before it. Which means the not-knowing you are standing in this morning is not evidence that you are doing this wrong. It is the normal weather of the first step.
What One Step Looks Like Tomorrow Morning
So here is the small, unglamorous, genuinely effective version.
Pick a time — the same time, so you are not deciding it twice. Ten minutes is plenty; it is not a down payment on an hour.
Read one scene from one Gospel. Not a chapter if a chapter is too much. One scene: Jesus walks in somewhere, something happens, someone reacts. Then write one sentence. Not a reflection, not a prayer journal entry — one sentence about what Jesus did in that scene, in your own plain words.
Then look for one thing you can do today because of it. Send the text. Say the sorry. Sit with the person nobody is sitting with. That is your colt in the village.
Do that for a week and something shifts that is hard to describe to someone who has not done it. The Bible stops feeling like a locked building. Mornings stop feeling like a test you might fail. And the question changes from what am I supposed to do to what is He like — which, it turns out, was the actual point. If the feeling has not arrived yet, that is normal too; following Jesus when you do not feel anything is its own well-worn path. And if the honest truth is that you are not sure yet, that is allowed — Matthew never says the doubt lifted before the sending.
A Path Beats a Plan
The reason a plan fails you here is that a plan asks you to see the end. A path only asks you to see the next stone.
30 Days Walking with Jesus was built as a path. It walks through the life of Jesus one day at a time, in order, so you never have to open the Bible and guess where to start. Each day is under ten minutes and includes a short devotional video under a minute long, a full-chapter audio reading you can listen to while you drive, and a page in a PDF study guide with a journal prompt — plus five quick-reference scripture guides for the moments you need a verse and cannot remember where it lives.
Thirty days from now you will have read through the Gospels’ account of His life once, with your own handwriting in the margins. That is a different thing from knowing about Jesus. That is the beginning of knowing Him.
It is free. There is no cost, no card, no expiration and no upsell, because the words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall. Access is instant, on any device, and it is yours to keep. Ten minutes tomorrow morning is the whole ask. If you are doing this without a church, a group or anyone to ask, you are in better company than you think.
Questions People Are Asking
Q: How do you follow Jesus when you do not know what to do?
A: You take the next step you can actually see, and you let the rest stay unclear for now. When Jesus sent followers on an errand in the Gospels, the instructions were remarkably short — “Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied” (Mark 11:2) — with no explanation of what it was for. Practically, that means picking a fixed ten minutes, reading one scene from a Gospel, writing one plain sentence about what Jesus did in it, and doing one thing today because of it. Clarity arrives while you are walking, not before you start.
Q: Does God give you a step-by-step plan for your life?
A: The Gospels show something closer to step-by-step guidance than a published itinerary. Two disciples were told to go into the city and follow a man carrying a pitcher of water (Mark 14:13) without being told whose house it was or what the evening would hold. Three of the six Gospel accounts of those errands end with the same note — they “found as he had said unto them” (Mark 14:16, Luke 22:13, Luke 19:32) — which means the confirmation came on arrival. Waiting for the entire plan before you move is the one approach the text never models.
Q: What should a new Christian do first?
A: Start with the life of Jesus rather than page one of the Bible, and start small enough that tomorrow is realistic. Read one scene a day from one of the four Gospels, in order, so the story builds instead of arriving in fragments. Keep a notebook and write a single sentence per day. Ten minutes a day that you actually keep will take you further in a month than an ambitious plan you abandon in four days — and it removes the decision of where to start, which is where most people stall.
Q: Is it normal to feel lost right after deciding to follow Jesus?
A: Yes, and the Gospels do not treat it as a failure. The people who walked physically beside Jesus were sent out with partial information, told what to say if they were challenged, and left to discover the rest on the way (Mark 11:3). Feeling unclear is not evidence that something went wrong in your decision; it is what the beginning of a relationship feels like when you do not yet know the other person well. The not-knowing shrinks as you spend time with Him, which is a matter of days and weeks, not a matter of getting it right on the first morning.
Q: Is 30 Days Walking with Jesus really free?
A: Yes — there is no cost, no card required, no trial that converts and no upsell. It includes thirty short devotional videos, thirty full-chapter audio readings, a complete PDF study guide with journal prompts, and five quick-reference scripture guides. Access is instant on any device and it is yours to keep. It is free because the words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall, and each day is designed to take under ten minutes.
