Come, follow me

I was feeling a bit bummed earlier today, letting my mind dwell on things that are beyond my control (as I do way too often), so I had a good chat with a dear, dear friend and decided that I needed to get into the Word and give my dear, dear friend a chance to chat back. I randomly opened my Bible to Luke 5, looked at the section headers and decided to back up to Luke 4 and then read through Luke 6. Let me just say that I love, LOVE how you can open up randomly and God will put you in a place where He can both comfort your heart, ease your wandering mind and slap you upside the back of the head all at once.

I'm going to start with Luke 5, where I originally opened. In this chapter, we read about Jesus' calling of the first four disciples. I read through the calling of Peter, James and John, and the simplicity of the call both amazed me and made me smile. He simply says, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." (Okay, I stole that from Matthew 4:19 just so that it would match the post title. Luke 5:10 actually says, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men.") And they take the boat to shore, leave everything behind and follow him. Next, he comes to Levi. Same deal: Levi is sitting at his tax booth when Jesus walks by and says, "Follow me." So Levi gets up, leaves everything behind and follows.

After I read about Levi, it dawned on me that my call happened with pretty much the same amount of simplicity. In my case, the getting up, leaving everything behind and going part is taking a little longer, but the principle is the same. I felt God call me into service, I questioned whether it was Him calling or me hearing what I wanted to, He very promptly provided the reinforcements I needed to be sure I was being called, and I said:


"Okay, God. I'll go, I'll go!" And Jesus isn't physically standing beside me for me to follow, the process of going understandably takes slightly longer nowadays.

Yeah, I haven't told you guys the details behind my calling. Next post! I LOVE sharing the details! The whole story is so awesome to me!


Moving on to Luke 6, Jesus teaches about blessings and woes:

²⁰ Looking at his disciples, he said:
   “Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹ Blessed are you who hunger now,
   for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh.
²² Blessed are you when people hate you,
   when they exclude you and insult you
   and reject your name as evil,
      because of the Son of Man.
   ²³ “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
   ²⁴ “But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have already received your comfort.
²⁵ Woe to you who are well fed now,
   for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
   for you will mourn and weep.
²⁶ Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
   for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Wow...this definitely makes me stop and examine myself. Which of these people am I, and which do I need to become? Am I blessed, or is Jesus saying, "woe to Rachel"?

And He follows that up by reminding me that I need to get down on my knees more often, pray for my enemies and pray for the strength to love them as Jesus commanded us to love them. It's so easy to love those who love us, but what credit is that to us? It's not so easy to love those who laugh in your face or take advantage of the love that you do give. I think maybe I should read this passage more often...

Oh, and I should probably be making an appointment with the optometrist sometime soon to get that plank removed from my eye...

And then we get to 6:46-49, which is the teaching of the wise and foolish builders. The fact that this passage was in what I randomly opened up to read was awesome, one of those God things, because I have recently been thinking a lot about this passage and how the story of my life over the past couple of years gives a perfect example of a life built on a foundation of sand:

49"But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."

The neat thing about it being in these readings was that I wasn't expecting it because I didn't actually know where it was found (though if I had thought about it, the first place I probably would have looked would have been Matthew, and I would have found it there as well).

And this confession that my life was built on a foundation of sand leaves you aghast, thinking, "What?! Her life is not built on the rock?! But she's going to be a missionary?! Oh no, oh no, oh no, this is a bad, bad idea..."
Well, you'd better be scheduling your own appointments with optometrist, and while you're at it, let me reassure that my life is being rebuilt on the rock which is Christ Jesus! But that is all I'm going to say right now. All of the juicy life-falling-apart-and-being-rebuilt details will be saved for later. It's a teaser so that you'll come back and read my next posts. Plus, let's all just admit right now that I'm long-winded enough as it is. I need to break these things up into different posts...it's just hard because I have so much to share!

And now we move back to Luke 5:16, which says:

"But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."

Let that serve as an important reminder that we also need to withdraw to our own lonely places as often as possible and get down on our knees and get into conversation with our Father.

One request: Please pray for me on this journey of faith, for all of the others involved in this project and for the overall success of this mission when you withdraw to your lonely place, as Jesus did, and pray.