Jesus did some crazy things, things that made people around him consider him to be unhinged. And yet, the one thing Jesus calls us to do it to follow him…follow him into the unhinged, crazy things that he does.
We use the word “follow” quite a bit these days and mostly it has to do with our social media presence.
I follow lots of different social media…
I follow wood working accounts,
Follow farming accounts
Follow cooking accounts
Follow smoking accounts – the meat kind
Follow earth-moving accounts
Follow Nasa, National Geographic
Follow Meme accounts
Follow some Jesusy accounts
Follow OSU football and Cincinnati Bengals accounts
Follow Dad joke accounts
But none of them require anything of me. In fact, all I do to follow them is click a button and the second I don’t like them I can unfollow. It’s very easy actually…I can enjoy the pleasure of them without any of the responsibility. As soon as I no longer wish to enjoy it, I am done.
The first thing Jesus did was to call two sets of brothers to follow him.
Simon Peter and his brother Andrew and another set, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, Jesus sees these men and calls them to Follow him with the promise of making them fishers of men.
These men are doing the things that they normally do in life and then Jesus interrupts their life and says, “Follow me.”
When Jesus asks you to follow it isn’t a social media follow and follow back that goes up and down on the whims of our pleasure.
When Jesus asks you to follow he is asking you to leave everything. Stop what you are doing…drop it right now and follow him – everything in our lives are subject to Jesus’ call to follow.
And that call to follow is for everyone.
Everyone gets the invitation, but not everyone responds.
Not every follows Jesus because he wants you to drop everything and follow:
Even your livelihood is subject to Jesus’ domain.
Even your family relationships are on the line.
Even your educational pursuits are in the mix.
When Jesus says follow, and you actually follow…it’s going to look like you’ve come unhinged!
We Follow Because Jesus Has Authority
When you follow someone on social media, they don’t have any authority over you…you can unfollow them the next day and they might not even know.
You can even mute them…yeah I follow them, but I’m sick of hearing from them and I don’t want to know what they are up to and how they can impact me so I just mute them.
Not so with Jesus…Jesus has authority.
And we don’t like authority, we don’t like to obey authority. We don’t want to be controlled.
Jesus has authority in your life when you give it to him by following him.
What next step is Jesus leading you to? Where is he telling you to follow him?
Does he have authority in your life, so much so that you will actually follow him?
Will you follow him even if it looks like you’ve come unhinged?
He’s calling you to…just follow.