As Jesus walked beside the Sea of
Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for
they were fishermen.“Come, follow me,” Jesus
said, “and I will send you out to fish for
people.” At once they left their
nets and followed him. Mark 1:16-18
My mother was an avid reader of
Consumer Reports magazine. She would
keep old copies of it so that when it came time to shop for something, she
could pull up one of the old articles giving ratings on various brands, and
then weight cost and quality to what would ultimately would be her
decision. She passed that on to me, but
I was not the one who enjoyed having magazines laying all over the
household. However as kids says
nowadays, there’s an app for that. Thus,
finding brands and researching on them right down to the model number became
easy. I love my microwave oven that we
replaced years ago because it was that good.
It gave me this sense of surety and confidence that my decision would
work out just fine because I had enough information.
The decision to follow Christ was
a decision I made just about fifteen years ago.
However one might ask what took me so long? It took me a while to figure out that Jesus
wanted me to follow him. When you are an
imperfect person who saw His followers as perfect, you do not believe you are
worthy of such a blessing. Thus, God had
to provide me with a lot of information.
Through His watching over me, He loved and protected me. He gave me scriptures through devotions, and
words of encouragement through followers.
Thus when the time came to make the decision, I was ready to
follow. The choice was easy because much
like my mother taught me when finding the right brand, God had shown me His
goodness, love, and finally, His grace.
So the decision was easy.
Making choices for Christ is easy
once you have the right information. This
sounds like a very simple and easy Devotion to take in. However, it is not the information that is
difficult. The application and practice
to come to the decision is. Our life is
a constant struggle to make good decisions because of our sinful nature. As Paul so well put, “I want to do what is
good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”
(Romans 7:19) This is the challenge we
have as followers. We all fail in some
degree or another. This is why Christ’s
sacrifice was necessary. We alone could
not cover our failures, and through Him, we are made perfect. Thus, we must always remember that following
Christ, while an easy choice, is a challenging journey if we do not have
practices that ensure our walk of faith stays true to His word. Understanding this provides us with the
information needed to make good faith based decision that allow us to walk as
Simon and Andrew did trusting in Jesus without hesitation.
Our choice to follow means
embracing the adventure that God lays before us. The journey of faith is one that is filled
with choices that have both blessings and at times heartache. But Jesus wants us to know that no choice is
without God’s watchful and loving eyes there to help and protect us. We do not ever get to either know or
understand this unless we have chosen to take up His cross and follow Him. So let us always remember Jesus Christ as our
savior as the foundation of all choices, and utilize the information we’ve gathered
in our journey of faith going forward.
What information are you needing from Christ today? What decisions might you need to wait on God
for? My prayer is that we trust God as
our source of information to make good decisions. Amen.
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