The same Jesus who has authority over nature (Mt 8:23-27), demons (8:28-34) and paralysis (9:2-8) is the One whose authority we should acknowledge over our own lives. David Bryant tells of a people movement in India in which twenty thousand poor Christians have divested themselves of virtually all their meager resources, mobilized to send forth as many of their number as possible to reach unreached peoples of India with the gospel (Bryant 1984:52). By contrast, it is difficult to engage many Western church members in such small gestures of self-discipline as fasting a meal or giving up an evening of television for door-to-door witnessing. In view of the way Jesus defines what it means to be his follower, one might well wonder how many of these church members are genuinely following the Jesus who speaks to us in the Gospels.