Following Jesus

Today I read Mark 1:9-20 in my quiet time. I’m constantly amazed at how my Bible reading corresponds with Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest. Today the Lord is focusing me on discipleship and following Him. We see in Mark 1:17 that Jesus said to Simon and Andrew, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” How did they respond to His call? “Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.” You can’t help but see that word “immediately.” Right now. Not later, or after I finish what I want to do, but immediately. Oswald Chambers says, “Discipleship means personal, passionate devotion to a Person, our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a difference between devotion to a Person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus.” I don’t know about you, but those words light a fire in my heart! That’s my desire - personal, passionate devotion to Christ. Plain and simple. I want my spiritual hearing to be so tuned to His voice that when He says go, I go; when He says give, I give; when He says stop, I stop. Oh Lord, work this out in me through Your Spirit.

And then, OC talked about the work of the Spirit in making us Christ’s disciples. He wrote, “The only Lover of the Lord Jesus is the Holy Ghost, and He sheds abroad the very love of God in our hearts (Romans 5:5). Whenever the Holy Ghost sees a chance of glorifying Jesus, He will take your heart, your nerves, your whole personality, and simply make you blaze and glow with devotion to Jesus Christ.” I think we need to remember our dependence on the Lord for everything. He does in us, through the Spirit, what we can never do in and of ourselves. Commitment must be God-wrought in us, not mustered up in the flesh. And that is the beauty and magnificence of following Christ. He makes us brand new - not an alteration of the old, but a metamorphosis. We are “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). I have been thinking deeply about these things for many years and the Lord is working them into my own life. And sharing it is just a taste of what I’ve written in a new book I’ve just completed, A Woman’s Walk In Grace - God’s Pathway To Spiritual Growth. Oh that we would, as OC says, blaze and glow with devotion to Christ.
Lord, thank You for calling me to be Your disciple. Do in me what I can never do for myself. Fill me with a passionate devotion to You, and cause your light to shine in me, drawing all to Yourself. In Jesus’ name, Amen.