Follow Him?

It seems to me that most people decide upon Jesus as a means of serving themselves.  They want fire insurance.  They want some piece of mind about taking care of what will happen to them when their physical body expires.  Many of these same people thank God for blessings, which again is somewhat self-serving.  Don’t take my intention wrongly, there is much written in the Scripture about being thankful.  I’m just saying it is a little self-serving because it still is somewhat focused on us.  Think about it for a second, how often do you give thanks to God for blessing in the lives of others?

When Jesus called His disciples, he simply stated “Follow Me.”  Did He come to you and tell you this?  If He would have, would you have?  Suppose that He is standing before you today, stating this to you.  How do you answer?  Is there any hesitation or doubt?  That hesitation and doubt is your inability to give all of yourself to follow Him and to do it on His terms.  We like to sing, where He goes I will follow (I Will Follow Him).  But the truth is, we will only follow on our terms or as long as it doesn’t mess with our plans or change our lifestyle.  We have a real problem when His confrontation to us is directly opposing to how we want to live.  We prefer to just have Jesus on the side and we’ll call Him when we need Him.  He’s just a tool in our arsenal of life survival and success.

In Matthew 8:22, Jesus answered the disciple who wanted to go and bury His father “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”  There is nothing more important than the “Follow Me”.  All if, but, or and conditional clauses are irrelevant.  It is mildly humorous that we, who have no authority in physical or spiritual realms, would put a condition on following Jesus who has all authority.  Who exactly do we think we are?  Truthfully the answer is only Yes or No.  We Do follow or we Don’t follow.  We believe in our heart or we don’t believe in our heart.  Jesus is the judge.  There will be a parsing.  We can be sure that there is a distinction between following and not following or believing and not believing and Jesus will make that separation among the people.  We choose and He searches our heart to know if we are merely paying lip service and serving ourselves.

How will you answer His call upon you today?