1 FOLLOW ME AND I WILL (RE)MAKE YOU FISHERS OF PEOPLE. Matthew 4:19 I WILL (RE)MAKE YOU With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We shall not cease from exploration. T.S. Eliot
LIFE Change is possible. I m not referring to short-lived or surface-level change. I m talking about change that lasts longer than a post-run endorphin hit, filtering through my brain (though that is both valuable and enjoyable). I m talking about change that is deeper than a new haircut (though that does take courage and does modify the way people see you... for a time). I m referring to deep and lasting change that flows from the very core of who you are. I am fairly sure that even now as you read this, you are thinking of parts of your character you would love to change.
For me, it s patience. I like to look patient (if only to myself). In fact, I used to pride myself on my patience. Back in my teaching days, I had no trouble keeping my cool while tackling a group of unruly twelve year olds. Whenever I stepped into the room, I would put on my cloak of patience and win... every time. It is true that I d need to continually remind myself, I can do this. I am patient. Then I started working for a church, and things got complicated. I remember making sure that whenever I was in or near my church s suburb I d be driving carefully, and always willing to smile and wave at all the conservative drivers who got in my way. The purpose of Follow is to take time to listen to what Jesus has to say, then practice the life we learn from him. Then I got married. It was at this point that my well-polished veneer of patience proved itself to be disastrously thin. I no longer had a defined role or limited bracket of time within which I had to appear patient. It now came with the territory. The problem was, I d get home after a full day of attempting patience and then be too tired to keep the act up any longer. I quickly realised I was actually far more impatient than I d been willing to admit to myself. Does this sound familiar? Is there an area of your life that doesn t match up to who you think you should be? As you go through life, all of us learn society s expectations of should. You might be a doctor and doctors should care about their patients. A social worker and social workers should be compassionate. A counsellor and counsellors should be full of peace. A manager and managers should be fair. A mother and mothers should always be gentle. A husband and husbands should be faithful. And on top of that... perhaps you re a Christian. And Christians should be filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It s a tiring list of shoulds! If I m honest, there always seems to be an area (or a few) of life that simply doesn t match who I d like to be. This book rests on the conviction that Jesus has something to say about this. In fact, he has a lot to say. The purpose of Follow is to take time to listen to what Jesus has to say, then practice the life we learn from him. From the outset, Jesus doesn t seem to call people to change the way they act. Instead, he invites people to change the way they think. The biblical word for this is repentance. It simply means to rethink the way you think. Your actions are a natural overflow of your thoughts. Following Jesus begins as you change the way you think about him. 10
I Will (Re)Make You In Matthew 4:19, Jesus says, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. Jesus uses the phrase follow me 19 times across all four Gospels. I think it is the most consistent phrase across all of Jesus teaching in each of the accounts of his life. Here is the whole conversation: As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of people. At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-22) This conversation that Matthew records is significant, in that Jesus has just been baptised he s spent 40 days fasting in the desert, and has then begun what we usually refer to as his mission. From the outset, he seeks out specific people and says follow me. Straight after this, we have his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus outlines what life following him actually looks like. FOLLOW ME Jesus words, follow me, are more of an invitation than a command, but an invitation that carries assertive authority. Imagine you re in an unfamiliar city and you need to get somewhere. You ask a local for help. It would be great if they pointed in the right direction, and even better if they gave you instructions on how to get there. What would be ideal though, is if they simply said, follow me, and headed off. It would be an invitation that carried assertive authority this is their area after all. This is what Jesus does. He invites people to learn life from him by watching him do it. We might have an idea of where we want to go or how we want to be but we re not quite sure how to get there. Life is Jesus area of expertise. As we follow, we learn from him the best way to live. 11
I am pretty sure that in this passage, Simon, Andrew, James, and John know who Jesus is, and Jesus knows who they are. What is clear, is that Jesus is intentional about who he invites. And the people he invites are just as clear about their commitment to him. These men leave their job and their family culturally the two most important aspects of life to go with him. In the culture at the time, if a man had returned to his family s profession for example, fishing it was because he hadn t been successful in his academic education. If a boy made it through the first 12 years of schooling, he would know the entire Scripture (our Old Testament) off by heart. He would then seek out a Rabbi to follow. After some months (or years) of gaining courage, he would ask that Rabbi if he could learn life from him if he could follow him. If the Rabbi didn t think the student was good enough to become his disciple, he would send him back to his family s trade. This conversation turns things on their head. Jesus was a teacher who had authority very few Rabbis were known as teachers with authority. And he intentionally went out to find disciples, inviting them to follow. I WILL (RE)MAKE YOU Jesus says, Follow me and I will make you. Some people hear this as a threat. Follow me, and I will make sure you act the right way in other words, I will teach you how to act right. I worked for a short while in the area of leadership development. It struck me that what people wanted was for me to go into schools and teach people who had been appointed in leadership roles to act like leaders. My job was to make sure they could resolve conflict, speak publicly, and manage small groups. Essentially, I had done my job if people could act right in this case, like leaders. As Christians, it s tempting for us to simply learn a collection of techniques that help us act like we think Christians are supposed to act. If we choose this path, we will get tired, and then disillusioned, and then bitter, as we realise how difficult it is to try and change our own behaviour. The phrase I will make you... is a promise. Jesus literally says, I will take you as you are, right now, and form something new within you. A life following Jesus promises that change is possible. It s not merely learning how to look patient. It s even more than knowing how to be patient. It s about becoming the type of person who simply is patient. Jesus changes who we are in our character, and this is later revealed in our actions. 12
I Will (Re)Make You Why, though, do we so often not experience this change? Or if we do, it s only sustained for a short time until we get tired and have to develop a new approach or wait until the next prayer ministry session, or the next spiritfilled international speaker comes to town? I think it s because we don t actually believe that it is Jesus alone who can lead us into the best way to live. We re too busy trying to learn right from wrong in our own power and change the outward appearance to notice that Jesus is calling us to himself. We don t trust Jesus with all of our lives. I often hear people speaking about the Christian life as the right way to live, or avoiding the wrong way to live. Some even try to distil life down to two ways to live! I am convinced that following Jesus is simply the best way to live. Unless we believe that, we will find learning life from him very exhausting indeed. Life with Jesus is about learning a completely new way to live. This new way of life comes as we, both individually and in community, create space for the Spirit of God to make all things new. As we do this, we become a people who naturally experience and extend God s healing, direction, sustenance and power. Unless we believe that Jesus offers us the best way to live, we re not going to take the time to learn this life from him. We ll take time to learn techniques for good behaviour, but not deep, lasting, whole-of-life change. I will make you... is a promise. Jesus literally says, I will take you as you are, right now, and form something new within you. C.S. Lewis said in his book, Mere Christianity, Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and trying to carry it out, (whether that s attempting to be patient, or honest, or good at praying, being able to heal, or hearing God s voice...). Rather, he says, The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to inject His kind of life and thought... into you. When we begin to learn life from Jesus, our vision of what is good is transformed. We realise there is so much more to life. As Jesus says, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:24-25). The life that Jesus invites us towards is a life he describes as flourishing in its absolute fullness. 1 1 John 10:10 13
FISHERS OF PEOPLE Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. It s tempting to hear Jesus say this and think that if you follow Jesus, you ll end up working for a church or going into the mission field. (Or, perhaps worse, door knocking.) But what Jesus teaches is how to do what you re already doing with your life really well, and for his Kingdom (we ll get to that in the next chapter). And you realise that where you are right now work, school, community is where you learn this. It s not that you have to do a whole lot more, it s that as your focus changes, your life changes, and you live the life of a disciple each moment of your day. Unless we believe that Jesus offers us the best way to live, we re not going to take the time to learn this life from him. At the core of it, this is about obedience. But before we get carried away burdening ourselves with what we think obedience looks like, we need to realise that this obedience is not about desperately trying to follow instructions. This obedience is committing ourselves to learning from Jesus how best to live: orienting our focus towards him. Obedience has been the key theme of every major reformer in the church for the past 500 years. Calvin, Wesley, Wimber, and Stott all focused on obedience as the key to learning all of life from Jesus. John Stott described what takes place when a community of people choose this obedience: Christ s call to obedience is a call to be different, not conformist. Such a Church joyful, obedient, loving, and free will do more than please God: it will attract the world. It is when the Church evidently is the Church, and is living a supernatural life of love by the power of the Holy Spirit, that the world will believe. 2 When people are obedient their lives change and incredible things happen. We see healing, we learn how to have a conversational relationship with God, we grow in discernment and we even see and experience signs of God s power. Unfortunately what often then happens is that we get distracted with these symptoms of obedience and try to imitate them without beginning with the commitment to learn all of life from Jesus. From the outset, when we hear Jesus invitation and see the kind of life he s calling us towards, our decision is whether we want to learn all of life from him. This all starts and ends with Jesus who he is, what he has done, and what he is doing. We are invited to join in! 2 J. Stott, The Changing World, ed. J. Stott, vol. 3, Obeying Christ in the Changing World (Collins and World, 1977). 14
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READ Follow me... 3 From the beginning the Great Invitation. But invited to what, exactly? Life! recites the answer (found somewhere near the back of The Book). All we need do, however, is look around for a moment (or even a little less than a moment). We soon realise the answer we actually live with is more along the lines of...life? Rather than interacting with The Answer we had initially hoped to find, we contort ourselves into caricatures of right action, right words, mere rightness. Hoping we stack up. This self-rightness can become a damned nuisance. Hollow too, if we look into it and shout around for a while. That vacuous echo of you re almost there, repeats with cavernous consistency. What does it look like to begin to know The Answer? 4 The rightness approach often begins with action usually negative action (by that I mean it binds us with nots ). It does seem simpler to deal with actions. It s encouraging to see quick results. The reality is however, that where our mind is, our heart and then our actions will follow. The Life approach then, begins with a change of mind 5 and this begins with our thoughts. It takes more time, but our actions then become more natural like breathing. 6 Let it be the most important thing we do, then, to reflect on the life of Jesus Christ. 7 3 Jesus, the Christ; Matthew 4:19; 8:22; 9:9; 10:38; 16:24; Mark 1:17; 2:14; 8:34; 10:21; Luke 5:27; 9:23; 9:59; 14:27; 18:22; John 1:43; 10:27; 12:26; 21:19; 21:22. 4 John 17:3 5 The biblical word is repentance. 6 Dallas Willard calls this routine, easy obedience. 7 T. à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: In Four Books, trans. J.N. Tylenda, S.J. (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998). 1 16
REFLECT Jesus was kneeling at my feet as he taught. A towel in his hands and a bowl of water on the floor by his side. Unless I wash you... you have no part in me. He considers me a while as he says this. I examine Him. Searching his eyes. I expect to see the look of disappointment I deserve. A look of frustration. A look of disgust. At the very least, a look of impatience with who I am. Instead, I see the smile of a friend. He is meticulous in doing The Job right. My feet cower at the touch of his hands. I see the drops of water taking with them the dirt, the filth, the remains of each day. He smiles at a job Well Done. Do you understand what I have done for you? I m really not sure that I do. I d ask Him to take me through it again... But my feet are already clean. 8 8 John 13:1-17 17
RELATE First of all, my child, think magnificently of God. Magnify his providence; adore his power; Pray to him frequently and incessantly. Bear him always in your mind. Teach your thoughts to reverence Him in every place, For there is no place where He is not. Therefore, my child, fear and worship and love God; First and last, think magnificently of Him! 9 9 W. Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (Peabody, MA: Hendrickason, 2009). Ch 18 William Law (1686 1761) was an English thinker and writer. In 1714, he had to leave his post as both a university lecturer and minister due to being unable to pledge allegiance to the Monarchy. His books became his mouthpiece. Andrew Murray, John Wesley and William Wilberforce (among many others) describe Law s books as having a profound influence on their life and work. 18
REST At least once a day, take a moment (or even a little less than a moment) to turn your mind towards Jesus. This may be sitting at a red light... your desk... in the sun... or even in church. It may be drinking a coffee... feeding a baby... lying in bed... cooking a meal. Something you do regularly would be helpful. Take a few slow breaths, let s not get legalistic about this, but three is ideal. As you breathe, acknowledge God s promise to be with you through the Spirit of Jesus. 10 Thank Him for His Presence. Ask for His strength to simply do what is best in the next moment. 11 When you re ready (or the light changes to green) move on. What I wear is pants, what I do is live, how I pray is breathe. 12 10 Matthew 28:20; Luke 24:49; John 14:15-20; Acts 2; Romans 8:38-39 11 Isaiah 40:28-31 and Philippians 4:13 are great texts to memorise for these moments. 12 T. Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). 19