The Ways of JesusSample

Follow Jesus

To live a life in the ways of Jesus, we have to leave our nets and leave our lives behind. Many times, we have this wild interaction with Jesus at some point in our life. Maybe it was an emotional one. Maybe we began to leave our nets and leave our lives, because our best friends began to do the same. Maybe you felt pressured. Maybe you didn’t really understand what was going on. Many people begin to drop their nets and drop their lives, but they forget to follow Jesus. When Jesus called Peter to be a disciple, Peter brought his boat back to land, and “they left everything and followed him (Jesus). 

What does following Jesus look like? Sometimes, I feel like leaving stuff behind is the easy part and following Jesus is the hard part. I can leave my nets. I can leave my own life behind. But how do I begin to follow Jesus? How do I follow someone I cannot see? I think we need to give ourselves some slack. Following Jesus is a process.

My wife Ashleigh and I love to go on family runs together. But we have a problem. We have a 5-year-old, 3-year-old, and a 1 year old. When Ryleigh was a baby, she couldn’t run with us. So, we changed things up. One of us would strap her to our chest in a baby carrier, and we would just go for a walk. She was too young to follow us. We had to carry her. When she got a little older, we put her in a stroller and pushed her. Now she is 5. She can’t run 3 miles with us, but she can run a mile or so. Ryleigh only knows where to go, because she is following our lead. When she gets tired, she jumps back in the stroller. When we begin to follow Jesus, we need a ton of help from Jesus to learn how to follow. We need our muscles to grow, trust to build, and Jesus is okay with carrying us at the beginning of our relationship with him. But at some point, we need to begin to follow him. Are you following Jesus? Or have you become a 30-year-old sitting in a stroller?