Follow Me

Among the first recorded words of Jesus are, "Follow Me." Follow Him, and He will make you a fisher of human souls. Follow Him, and He will show you true peace. Follow Him, and He will give you the riches of the Heavenly Kingdom.

"Follow," as used here, encompasses virtually every English meaning of the word: follow the path and don't wander off; stay behind the Leader and don't run ahead or lag far back; follow instructions and don't try to invent your own way. The original Greek also carries the sense of "accompany" or "assist." When we follow Jesus, we are more than His subjects; we are His companions, right-hand people, and friends. 

Many of us want to follow Him but wonder why the path never seems clear. Often it's because we have our stubborn minds made up to follow only at our own speed and on our own terms. While relatively few of us flatly refuse to obey clear instructions, many of us are all too willing to listen with half an ear if we suspect God may tell us anything we don't want to know. Or, conversely, we nag Him to provide instructions in detailed long-term format so we aren't distracted from the important work by the nuisance of keeping in constant touch with Him. We don't really want Jesus to be our Leader; we want Him to be our daily planner who organizes our own preferred duties, our front guard who goes before us while we choose path and pace.   

If, as a child, you ever lost Mom in a public place, you have some idea of the results that attitude can serve up.

Of course, unlike that frantic mother, Jesus knows exactly where we are even when we're lost. He simply waits for us to call to Him, in sincerity and repentance, to show us the way back to the path. Often, we can't see His leading clearly because we don't yet feel lost enough to know the desperate earnestness of seeking Him wholeheartedly.

But as God told the Israelite exiles (in Jer. 29:13) who became lost when they stopped following Him: "You will seek me and find me [and My plan for you] when you seek me with all your heart."

He Who called His first disciples
Where the lake in sunlight basked,
Still does call us where we labor:
"Follow Me, and find your task."

He Who called the weak and weary
To a "load" that meant release,
Still is calling us to trust Him:
"Follow Me, and walk in peace."

He Who called the ones reluctant
To abandon earthly care,
Calls us still to full surrender:
"Follow Me to Heaven's share."

Lord, You led the way through suffering,
On through death, to life again:
May we find the faith to answer,
"We will follow to the end."

Thine Is the Power

Even more amazing, perhaps, than God's full control of the vast universe is the attention He gives each living soul. C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain,"[T]he sheer difference between [God and ourselves] is one compared with which the difference between an archangel and a worm is quite insignificant.... But at the same time... the intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another."

And God went further--much further--even than wanting us for friends. The person willing to die for someone else is relatively rare. The person who would do it for anybody besides his or her closest loved ones is the extreme exception. And few of us would care to admit openly that we consider our own lives worth the sacrifice of anyone else's.

But by Christ's standards, not only was the lowest of human beings worth dying for, but we were worth the additional sacrifice of leaving heaven to spend thirty-plus years on this imperfect, troubled earth--and in poverty and service, under frequent misunderstanding and abuse, at that. The greatest paradox surrounding God's power is that its strongest display is through voluntary weakness.

Ours no less than His.

The Power of God
Is the Power that bore
All of earth's humiliation--
The Power of Love,
That which gives and gives,
That which bought our vindication:
That Power which won
Through renouncing all
Brought the crown of Life unending;
The Power that rules
Never showed contempt
For the weak He's still defending.

We who are His
Need not fear to bear
All the hate of those who mock us,
For through His Power
We can give our all,
And no power of earth can rock us.
If you would win,
Then surrender now--
Trust that He will bring you glory--
Bow your head to Him,
And absorb His love,
And go out to spread His story.

Not Mine

Lately, my calendar has been plagued by an epidemic of last-minute changes; I count 22 reschedulings and cancellations (most on less than 24 hours' notice) since the beginning of February. I tend to take it poorly. My nature gravitates so strongly toward orderly and careful planning that I even get annoyed at pleasant surprises.

Unfortunately, refusing to accept the unchangeable doesn't leave a person any less stuck with it. As God said to Paul in the saint's rebellious days, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads" (Acts 26:14, NIV). The metaphor refers to a sharp-pointed stick, a "goad," that was used to prod animals forward when plowing. As an ox's kicking backward at the annoyance only made the goad stab deeper, so a person's ranting or sulking over the "unfairness" of life only intensifies the pain of disappointment.

More than that, complaining feeds our rebellious nature and steers us toward the dangerous ground of telling God that we know better than He does, or that we don't care what He wants. There's nothing wrong, of course, with praying that things will go "well"--if we phrase such prayers as respectful requests rather than demands, and if we accept that God doesn't owe us anything. Too often, we approach prayer as spoiled brats rather than as humble servants.

The tendency to defy God gets even worse when we do have a choice of whether or not to go through with the whole awful matter. Jesus, Who was "tempted in every way, just as we are" (Heb. 4:15), had His own thoughts of backing out as He stood face to face with the reality that the Cross--the ultimate physical and spiritual agony--was finally imminent. We can never fully appreciate how difficult it was for Him to finally pray, "Not my will, but Yours be done." We do know, however, that had Jesus insisted on His own way instead of putting the Father's will first, we might as well have continued living for worldly pleasure--because we'd have no hope, ever, of anything better.

Jesus accepted the hard parts of God's will for our sake. Do we owe Him any less?

He knelt in the garden grove praying,
His eyes nearly blind with grief
As they looked ahead to the suffering,
And His heart craved a word of relief.
His voice shook with sobs at the vision,
Yet it rang with a note sublime:
"My Father, I long to escape this;
But let it be Your will, not Mine."

Blood mingled with tears as they tumbled
From His eyes to the rocky ground,
While the ones whom He loved slept onward,
So blind to the truth profound;
And He lifted His gaze to the heavens,
His cheeks wet with His tears' sharp brine:
"My Father, is this how it must be?
Then let it be Your will, not Mine."

They came for Him there in the garden,
And led Him away in the night;
He raised not a hand in resistance;
He made not one attempt to fight;
As He writhed in the pain of His death-throes,
His cry rang down the vaults of time:
"My Father, I die for the guilty,
So let it be Your will, not Mine."

His death paid the price to release me;
His pain salved the guilt of my sin;
He calls me His own, and He leads me
In the war He alone can win.
However my pathway seems darkened,
His light from within can shine:
My Savior, whatever the battle,
Please let it be Your will, not mine.

Not Our Way but His

Yesterday afternoon, I made a blood donation for the first time in several years. I didn't plan it; it was a matter of the blood drive van's "just happening" to be there, a "divine interruption" along the line of yesterday's theme: "It is God Who plans our lives, and not we ourselves." This particular interruption wasn't much of an annoyance; but I did have to keep reminding myself not to take pride in my own generosity, but instead to thank God for the chance to serve.

Pride was probably at the root of my having gone so long without even trying to give blood. Pride and stress, the latter of which was behind my being rejected the last few times I offered. Either my pulse or blood pressure had temporarily gone high, or I was just so visibly nervous that no one wanted to risk sticking a needle in me. After the first such time, the fear of another rejection caused more stress than the fear of the needle. But still it was largely pride talking: "They have no right to waste my time with all these questions and then turn me away."

Pride is the bad attitude that nurtures all other bad attitudes: anxiety, anger, and envy alike are rooted in the delusion of a natural right to have things go our way. Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (NIV), has even been quoted in defense of the idea that God will make all true Christians healthy and prosperous if they only ask in sufficient faith.

What pride ignores is that, as with Olympic stars who give up sweets and evening parties to help themselves become the best athletes possible, reaching the true "best" often requires sacrificing some lesser "good."

We all have our plans and our longings;
We all hope to see things go "right";
We're tempted to fume in frustration
At every dead end or red light.
But God knows the flaws in our planning,
And He sets the course of our days:
The greatest good isn't our comfort,
But that we would live for His praise.

We all dream of comfort and fortune;
We all hope to live lives of ease;
We all tap our feet in impatience
When things fail to go as we please.
But God knows the best for each lifetime,
And He plans its times and its length:
It's not our "success" that's His purpose,
But that we will grow in His strength.

Some saints will be called to be wealthy,
And some will be called to be poor;
For some every venture will prosper,
While some see dreams crushed on the floor.
God knows what each soul can use wisely,
And He gives each joy and each pain
To strip us of all earthly idols
And help us allow Him to reign!