- Lesson 3 in the BaptistWay Press Connect 360 unit “The reMARKable Journey Begins” focuses on Mark 1:16-20.
I went fishing the other day. People around me were pulling in a fish every few minutes. Little children squealed with delight every time they landed one. Old men with plenty of experience calmly set the hook as I watched them pull fish to the shore. Everyone was catching fish. Everyone but me. For some reason fish seldom bite my bait. As my son always reminds me, I went fishing, but I did not go catching.
But Jesus went catching the day he encountered Simon and Andrew and James and John. When Jesus called them to follow him, they took the bait— hook, line and sinker. Like a fish on the line, Jesus pulled them in by his magnificent power, and they were compelled to follow along behind him.
What made these crusty sea salts drop everything to follow some traveling preacher around? What made them abandon their careers, their possessions, their security, and even their own father, leaving him behind with the employees? But that is what they did. They heard the call of Jesus and dropped everything to follow him. Jesus caught them.
These men followed Jesus because they were caught by his call on their lives. The call of Jesus told there was something more urgent than what they were doing. Jesus’ call alerted them they were drowning in the waters of a mediocre existence, when there was something more important to which they could give their lives.
Answer the call
Have you ever received a call that made you drop everything you were doing because it was clear there was something more urgent? When you get the phone call that there has been a death in the family, you drop whatever you are doing and go. When your boss calls you into her office, it doesn’t really matter what you are doing at the moment, you abandon what you are doing because you have been called by a higher authority. When the fire department receives a call to attend to a house fire, they drop whatever is happening in the station, load up the truck, and follow the call because something more urgent is happening. Those kinds of calls make you change your plans.
I think that is what happened to Simon and Andrew and James and John. They heard the call from Jesus and it changed everything. They dropped their possessions, their plans, their careers, and their security because they recognized the call of Jesus was calling them to something more urgent.
Most of us have heard that urgent call of Jesus to follow him. Maybe you heard it through the voice of a preacher or Sunday School teacher at church. Maybe you heard it from a parent who spoke to you about your budding faith. Maybe you heard the call in a life crisis when you realized you could not handle the situation alone. Jesus calls in all sorts of life circumstances. When he calls, he is calling us to change what we have been doing all our lives and follow him instead.
Maybe you hear the call of Jesus as you read these words. There is nothing more important, nothing more urgent than answering that call. It is a call that will make you change your plans.
Compiled by Stan Granberry, marketing coordinator for BaptistWay Press.
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