Follow Me.

“One day as Jesus was walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother, Andrew, fishing with a net, for they were comercial fishermen.  Jesus called to the, “Come, be my disciples, and I will show you how to fish for people!”  And they left their nets at once and went with him.

“A little farther up the shore Jesus saw Zebedee’s sons, James and John, in a boat mending their nets.  He called them, too, and immediately they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men and went with him.”

 – Mark 1:16-20 (New Living Translation)

So, imagine this.  You and a hundred of your friends are sitting in BCM, FCA, RUF, Bible Study, Whatever and Jesus just strolls in through the doorway, takes one look at you (the whole group) and simply says “Follow Me.”  Then he walks out the door.

What would that look like?  Who would drop everything and follow wherever he leads? 

I think over half of us, who call ourselves Christians, wouldn’t even notice.  As a church community, I dont think half of us would even hear Him whispering in our ear.  I find that, at times, we are so focused on the music and the speaker teaching about God, that we forget to listen to the silence. 

God wasn’t found in the raging wind that rips apart mountains, nor is he in the earthquakes that bring us to our knees, nor in the firestorms that ravish our lives.  God is in the gentle whisper of the silence.  (1Kings 19:11-13)

We constantly fill our lives with noise, because as humans, we are afraid of two things; the dark and the silence.  The two things that reveal who and what we truely are to the world. 

So, we play our music loud and we stand in the light to hide from God.  We praise him with songs and learn everything we can about him, but in the end, we dont actually know God, because we havn’t been listening for his whisper in our lives. 

We dont know his voice because we have been listening to all the wrong things.  We’ve been listening to the wind and to the earthquake and to the firestorm and we have forgotten the silence that God surounds us with. 

But when we do hear the voice of God, how many of us are actually willing to follow Him?  How many, out of the hundreds that surround you, would drop everything, get up and follow him?  Only a few would.

Jesus didnt tell his disciples, ‘hey, think about it for a while, then get back to me.’ No.  He looked them in the face and said “Follow Me.”  There was no doubt in his words.  And they followed him. 

They left everything they knew behind.  Simon and Andrew quit their jobs on the spot.  James and John hopped out of their boat, leaving their own father behind.  They left their homes.  They left their familes.  They left everything they had.  Because they followed Jesus.

We make up so many excuses not to follow what God has planned for our lives.  We tell him to wait a few months, years until we finish school.  We tell him we are to busy with projects and papers to read his words on a daily basis.  We tell him that our families would not agree.  That the path is to narrow.  That the road is to long. 

We dont want to leave our boyfriends or girlfriends.  We dont want to leave the security of our own homes.  We dont want to let go of the money.  We dont want to loose hope of the ‘good’ job with benefits and a bonus check. 

We find all these excuses.  And in doing so, we have turnd our backs on God. 

I’m guilty of it.  I believe we all are.

We want to follow God, but we want the easy way.  We want the safe path.  We want temptations to dissapear.  Want comfort.

God wants us to follow Him.  He is calling to us in the silence of our lives.  So, my challenge to you (and to myself) is to quiet yourself, quiet your soul and listen to God.  And when (not if, but when) you hear him, follow. 

God Bless and PEACE