Faith to Follow

 They were a motley crew. Rough around the edges. Some easily angered. Hard working. No non-sense. Salt of the earth kind of people. Blue collar workers. Earning a living by the sweat of their brow every day. Simple folk. 

That is what makes it all the more surprising they were handpicked for an important assignment. While others would have looked right past them, they were recruited for an assignment that would change history. They were given a choice. Stay in the status quo or start down the path of risk and adventure. Play it safe or throw caution to the wind. Choose safety, security, and boredom or choose discomfort, danger and excitement. 

If this group had chosen to play it safe, we would never have heard of any of them. What a simple choice to follow by faith led them to fame beyond anything they could have imagined. It was not an easy path to follow. It was a path filled with peril. In fact, some of the group did not survive. To be honest, most of them lost their life on the mission including their captain. 

What group am I referring to? You can read about them for yourself in Matt 4:18-22. The recruiter and captain of the mission was Jesus. The small band He recruited became known as the disciples. They chose to follow Jesus by faith. They left everything to join Jesus on His mission. 

Thousands of years later Jesus is still recruiting unlikely people to live on mission for Him. To surrender everything. To die to their own personal dreams in order to embrace God's greater dream. To pack their bags, loosen their tent pegs, to willingly give up the safe and familiar in order to follow Jesus into the risky unknown. Sometimes that means a change of job and cities. Other times it means a change of citizenship in a foreign land. It might require further education in preparation for service. It might lead to forsaking family in order to follow. Jesus still recruits people to follow Him by faith. 

Even if He never calls you to relocate that does not mean that He does not call you to follow Him by faith. It might be to start a ministry that you never even considered until He called. I have seen that with my own eyes. People retired from their professional lives in order to be in full time service for Him at their local church and in their local communities. It is following that requires faith. It leads to a life of fulfillment and grand adventure beyond belief. 

It all starts with faith to follow. The raw courage to say yes to Jesus' invitation to follow Him. To choose faith over fear. To choose trust over the tired routines. To choose belief over living with blinders on. I am not saying that following Jesus is always easy. It was not easy for the disciples. Most died violently in the cause of Jesus. One betrayed Jesus and committed suicide. They lived an adventure. They witnessed miracles, saw people transformed, helped start a revolution, and helped spread a movement around the world that is still going strong today. All of that started with faith to follow. Faith to accept Jesus' invitation. Faith to obey. Faith to walk away from security. Faith to embrace the adventure of the unknown. 

Could it be that Jesus is calling you? Recruiting you for His mission? Could it be that you feel a stirring inside, a restlessness, a yearning for something more? Could Jesus be kindling faith in you to follow? Let the adventure continue.