Do you ever wonder what God is doing? It is easy to take a look at life and be disappointed with the current state of your life and assume that God has decided to take the day off. Or let’s be honest, sometimes it feels like he took the entire year off. It could feel like the wheels have fallen off of your life and you’re stuck in the same position unable to move forward. However, what if we’re looking at it from the wrong angle?
Jesus invited a group of people to follow Him, to be His disciples. A disciple was someone that apprenticed with another more experienced teacher. And in this case, these disciples were the apprentice to the Son of God. Everyday for 3 years they followed Jesus and listened to His teaching. They asked questions of Jesus. They ate together, and went on boat rides, long hikes, and navigated all kinds of challenges together. But it all began with a simple question. Jesus asked the disciples to follow him.
Jesus came to Peter and Andrew and told them to leave their nets and follow Him. Jesus did the same to James and John when they were fishing with their father in the family business. Matthew was busy at his tax collectors booth when he heard Jesus’ invitation. Their activities may have been different, but the question from Jesus was the same–Follow Me.
I’m afraid that too many of us hear Jesus’ invitation of “FOLLOW ME”, and we say, “yeah, yeah, Jesus, that would be awesome.” We get excited because we hear the voice of the Lord and it feels fresh and new. But somewhere along the way we start taking our eyes off of Jesus. We stop going where He is going, eating what He is eating, and doing what He is doing.
Then we turn around and say, Jesus, how about you follow me? If we’re not careful we can take the invitation from Jesus and get it backwards. Jesus invited us to follow Him, not the other way around. There are any number of ways to get people to follow you in today’s world, from social media, to different apps on your phone. Jesus never said, let me follow you. He invited you to follow Him. To take up His ways and follow Him. To do what He does, love the way He loves, forgive the way He forgives.
If you’re wondering what God is doing, and it looks like God isn’t active in your life, I wonder if maybe the problem isn’t that God has left you, or that God isn’t interested in you. What if you have gotten it twisted up and instead of following Him you’ve slowly let the expectations switch to where He’s supposed to follow you now.
If you want to experience God, and experience the close presence of your savior move to where God is moving. Pay attention to the disciples. What did they do? They went wherever Jesus went. They moved where He was moving. And do you know what they saw? They saw a MOVE OF GOD!
They saw people healed. They saw a blind man regain his sight. They witnessed a woman who was being shamed to death protected and brought back to life. They watched as a man who couldn’t walk got up and stretched his legs and walked off healed! They watched as a violent storm was brought to peace. They saw a man who was possessed by demons brought back to his right mind. The witnessed a move of God!
If you want to see a move of God, you’re going to have to move to where God is moving. It’s not about forcing God to move to where you are.
In what ways have you been expecting God to follow you? What would it look like for you to be committed to following Him?
