Do you know where you are going?
Or where you have been?
Are you even headed in the right direction?
These may seem like ridiculous questions but if you have charted your own path with little or no thought to what God would have you do or where He would have you go….then you may think you know the answers to the questions above…but do you?
“As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another He said, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”
Luke 9: 57- 61
The Lord has been showing me these verses now for several years and each time I would read this section and meditate on it but I would come to the same conclusion, “Lord, I love You and I am surrendered to You. I don’t know what You are telling me.”
Sort of like the disciples a few verses earlier in Luke where Jesus rebukes James and John for wanting to call down fire on a village of Samaritans for not receiving Jesus. I would probably want to do the same thing. I can just see James and John sitting around and saying , “What is He talking about?”, “Sometime’s I just don’t get that guy”……Ouch!!
I can be really thick headed and not at all mean to be. I have often asked the Lord to just tell me in plain English what He wants me to do or where He wants me to go and I will do it. But will I?
I have missed out on some really great things that the Lord has done and wanted me to be a part of because I lived most of my “former” life without Him. And it hurts. That is one of my biggest regrets in life, knowing that He had plans for me that were far better than what I could have dreamed up. Whatever plans He had for me would have been better because His plans for us were created when we were created. A path with Him, following Him. Living in and through Him. “In Him we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:28a
I have told the Lord that I will follow Him, and I’m sure He just shook His head because He knew. He knew that I would go my own way more times than I can account for. He has asked me to Follow Him and I have put Him off because I wasn’t ready to give up whatever it was at that particular time. But again, I said, Lord, I will follow You!! And I mean it with all of my heart, but first let me say farewell to those at my home……..
In this tug of war that we play when “following” Jesus and the stages of following but not following because we don’t understand what it really means to follow… He asks another question, “Don’t you trust Me?”. See, the thing is, it boils down to trust. We could be at the very precipice of soaring with Him, just ready to take off…when we remember that we have to say farewell to those at our home. And so we turn from the unknown and go back to what we know, our comfort zone. We procrastinate. Put it off for another day or another excuse. Our trust wavers so we choose not to follow.
Thankfully, He meets us where we are at. He welcomes us back. With open arms. Each time. You see there is more than one way to be a prodigal.
“….but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”
Luke 15:20
Each time He runs to meet us…..while we are still a ways off. Our Father has set His sights on us with such love. It’s always love that He has for us. And He embraces us and He kisses us. He welcomes us home to that safe place where He can provide and protect and lead us in the only way we should go. With Him!
Will you follow Him?
Love,
Kim