The Blankie, The Invitation, and Dropping Cumbersome Nets

One of the things about having little kids: when you're leaving to go somewhere, they always want to take their most-recently-used stuff with them. The blankie, the matchbox car, the Thomas trains, the recently strung together bead necklace...whatever.

This weekend, I traveled with 115 students to New Student Retreat. It was awesome. And as I spoke out of an old favorite passage, I was reminded of the difficulty of leaving stuff behind.

"Come follow me," Jesus said, "and I will teach you to fish for people."

This is how Jesus starts his relationship with four guys who will end up being his go-to church-starter, Bible-writing guys. An odd invitation, if you think about it--not why most of us Jesus-followers decided to follow him.

"And immediately they dropped their nets and followed him." A crazy, over-the-top response.

The disciples leave everything that they've known, their security blanket, their family business, all of it. If it would have been me, I would have tried to bring the nets with me. It's what I've always known, it's what's expected of me by my family, and it could be something to fall back on should this whole Jesus thing not work out.

But they have to leave the nets. Jesus is going to lead them through deserts and forests and cities and those nets would have only tripped them up. They have to leave the nets, there is nothing left in that for them.

Most of us who are Christians follow Jesus with one foot in another door of some sort. Most of us are walking around, trying to follow Jesus, with our hands full of another option, a personal back door, something that we're not willing to let go of, forget about, put aside in order to follow fully.

And it shows.

You know what happens if those guys don't drop their nets and follow Jesus? Absolutely nothing. Jesus still starts his church. They live their lives in relative ease and die anonymous fishermen. Instead, I'm blogging about them 2,000 years later.

There's no limit to what God can do with someone who is willing to drop their nets and follow him. I'm freshly convicted and emboldened coming off the weekend to do just that.

Now if only we can get the kids to buy-in, it'll make going places a whole lot simpler...