Last night, Wednesday Sept. 3rd, the YouthRoom was once again full of devotion to God’s Word. I continually am shocked at how interested these youth are to hear God’s Word taught and explained. It blesses my soul (makes me so happy) that they are like this. Nearly every wednesday, despite my sub-par teaching, the youth are dialed in, Bibles in hand, ready to listen. I thank God for that, and I thank the youth for giving God and me that respect.
We are walking through the Gospel of Mark. We just began a few weeks ago. God is already at work through this expositional study. Last night, we focused on a short passage, verses 1:16-20.
This is the passage where Jesus calls his first disciples. Here in Mark, as well as in John, he calls Simon Peter and his brother Andrew first. Then the next two are James and John, the two brothers. All four of these guys are fishermen. We spent some time discussing characteristics of fishermen. They are usually not so wealthy. They are down to earth. Usually not the most educated people. Usually they don’t talk very much. They don’t want to scare the fish away. They usually aren’t in much of a hurry. Most of us are pretty familiar with fishermen, and there is no reason to think any differently about these four men.
As Jesus passes by them, he simply says to them “Follow me.” And they do.
Three times in this short text we see the word “follow.” We spent most of the evening discussing what it means to follow Jesus. As I expected, when i asked the youth what it means to follow Jesus or to be a follower of Him, they answered “to believe in him.”
I went on to explain that while that is true it also consists of so much more.
We follow Him because He is worth following. We follow Him because He has forgiven us and made us new. We have experience His changing us and so we follow HIm.
We concluded by saying that a great test for ourselves as to whether we are following Christ or not is do we love the things he loves and hate the things he hates.
As the K2G teaches, are we committed and bound to God and His truth as communicated to us in His word, and therefore feel a real and personal attachment to Him. And then therefore are we loving what He loves and hating what he hates?
If we are, then we most likely are true followers of Jesus! Whereever He leads, I’ll go!