When Jesus calls…

In Matthew, chapter 4, he tells us a story.  It is a story of Jesus calling the first disciples.  In this story, “Jesus disrupts family structures and disturbs patterns of working and living.  He does so, however, not to destroy but to renew.”  (from an unknown author…Les, help me out.)

For most of my life, I have struggled with and wrestled with many of Jesus’ words and his “ways of doing things.”  His calling of the first disciples has been quite literally disturbing to me for as long as I can remember.  ”Come follow me…and I will make you fishers of men.  Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”  I have, for lack of a stronger word, hated these words because I thought I had to make a choice.  Either family or Christ.  

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is most definitely a choice involved.  And it is entirely possible to choose family over following Jesus.  But there is grace to be found in this perplexing text.  The grace is just this; Jesus isn’t calling us to leave behind and destroy our familial relationships, he is inviting us to do relationship in a wholly different way than we are used to.  

I just can’t seem to get it through my thick skull that “the Kingdom of heaven does not exist to serve the family; the family exists to serve the Kingdom of heaven (Matt. 10:34-39 & 12:46-50).” (same unknown author)  So, rather than choosing Christ and leaving my family at home, maybe it’s time to start thinking a little bit differently and remember that I am a husband, and I am a father, and thus Christ is calling me to follow him and do marriage and parenthood in a completely different way; His way, where as a family, we serve the Kingdom together.

There will probably be more to come.  And, if you’d like to comment, you may actually be quoted in my upcoming sermon…  I would like to explore this a bit more, which I’m sure will happen. 

babies?…

Remember back when you were a child…better yet, remember when your children were babies?  What kind of food did you give them?  The soft stuff… Why?  Well, 1. they hadn’t grown any teeth, 2. their system can’t handle that kind of food…We often make many correlations to the Christian life and food.  

In fact, Paul himself does it.  The fact still remains… we haven’t taken advantage of Paul’s process of thinking.   Simply put, I expect each person who walks through the doors of our church  to comprehend the mystery of God to the degree that I myself do…not that I can honestly say I even understand a piece of the Godly mystery.  That said, why haven’t we considered growing our churches more organically, much like the growth cycles of life? 

And my next question, is that even possible?  Are we to believe that it is impossible for someone to grow in Christ by starting them on the simple, soft foods of the gospel? I’ll continue these thoughts later… food for thought…