What Does It Really Mean To Follow Jesus? with Jason Butler (Part 2)

What Does It Really Mean To Follow Jesus? with Jason Butler (Part 2)

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol and other addictions when, from the outside, everything looks perfect? This conversation with pastor, counsellor and author Jason Butler turns that question inside out. Jason grew up in church, knew all the right verses, and enjoyed serious financial success. But behind the image was "multiple addictions.

Alcohol, pornography" and a heart, as he says, where "money was my lord, hands down." He talks honestly about using Jesus like a switch he could flip when life got rough, while quietly sinking deeper into dependence and emptiness.

Fourteen years ago, a familiar Bible line hit him like "a two by four" – *"It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven"* – and he walked away from a lucrative career without any clear plan except to follow Jesus. Recovery didn’t happen overnight; the addictions fell away gradually as his focus shifted from success to surrender.

Jason shares how the story of Matthew, the tax collector, and the Rich Young Ruler mirror his own journey, and how his book *Will Jesus Know You?* grew out of a friend’s unsettling question about that line in Matthew 7: *"I never knew you."* For Jason, the Sermon on the Mount has become a kind of blueprint for reshaping a self-focused heart into one that wants what God wants.

He also speaks directly to people in addiction or early recovery, stressing that feeling spiritually "numb" sometimes is normal and not a sign of failure. Through career loss, near-bankruptcy, and hard obedience, he says he has found more joy than in all the years of wealth and hidden acting out.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Jesus could really want someone with your past, this story might make you ask a different question: what might happen if you simply said, "Follow you? Okay, one step at a time"?