The theme of my blog is simple: follow

If fact, the subtitle under my name on the home page simply means “I follow.” The Greek is simply a justification of the 4 semesters of undergraduate study which I invested.

As I recently read, “We all look like sheep from the front and shepherds from the back. In other words, we’re all following someone, and we’re all leading someone else.” (Breen)

It is a pretty simple concept – follow – but it is also one that I have been contemplating over the past three and a half years or so. As proof, I offer an article I originally wrote in the fall of 2008 when my life was in a state of flux due to a job change, school change for the kids, and soon-to-be church and house change. It reads as follows:

In the blank pages of my Bible in the front and back, I have written down quotes that have stuck with me over the years. Most of them were spoken in a sermon, and I jotted them down so that I could go back and read them again and remember what they were. Several of them are from current or former Pastors. A sampling includes the following:

“It’s not how loud you shout or how high you jump, but how straight you walk when you hit the ground”

“We don’t need a God who gives us everything. We need a God who is our everything.”

“A preacher should be just as concerned with what his people do with the sermon on Monday as he is with how he gives it on Sunday.”

“Jesus chooses men not on the basis of what they are, but on the basis of what He can make them.”

“You can never have freedom from Christ. You can only have freedom in Christ.”

“Worship always originates with God. He reveals Himself, and we respond. That is genuine worship.”

“Wind watchers will never be wave walkers” (Matt. 14:30)

I feel so blessed to be able to learn God’s word from men who are older and wiser than me. I’m grateful for Godly examples to follow – which brings up a quote that is both simple and profound, and exactly what I needed to hear tonight. Dr. Charles Petitt was speaking at a Missions Conference and spoke from Matthew 16:24 which says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Such a familiar verse, and yet so ignored. Remarkably enough, it wasn’t the first two parts of this verse that got to me, it was the last, “follow me.”

I’ve gone through a lot of change in my life over the past 6 months, but to my knowledge, God has not rescinded that call for me to follow Him. It is not always an easy thing to do. Many times my mind and attention wander to less eternal things. Many times my focus is on things which simply will not last. I’m caught focusing on the physical temporal instead of the invisible eternal. And so, the next quote that needs to go in my Bible, but more importantly lived out in my every day life, is this:

“follow, follow ……. follow, follow, follow…….follow, follow, follow, follow, follow.”