Follow the Leader
As a kid, one of my favourite games was Follow the Leader. The wooden bench seats under the Peppercorn Trees made for excellent jumping; leaping from one bench to the other required skills. But the game quickly degenerated because no one wanted to follow me! Ha! I got equally frustrated with my friend’s lack of imagination, wandering off through boredom when they became the leader.
Fast forward 40 years…So during our English as a Second Language (ESL) lesson the class wanted to hear about Jesus- in English (not their native tongue). The one thing I want them to know about Jesus, is that we all need to be rescued by Him.
I showed this picture and asked, Who is Jesus?
They got that right. Then I asked, who is the person in the water?
The silence was broken by a woman’s voice that knew His love, “That’s me.”
“And me,” I said.
It’s cooperation between God and us, we have a choice to go off into the ocean of pleasure and sin, or we can reach out and be rescued.
But what are we rescued for? Once Jesus brings us out of the bondage of sin and gets hold of us, what does He want us to do?
Simple.
Follow Him.
Follow the Leader.
Just like the game, we acted out Follow the Leader: Sometimes following Jesus will be easy, as I walked on down a straight level aisle in the church. But then sometimes He asks us to follow where it’s tough-I jumped over all the wooden chairs. With giggles and gasps, I think my point carried.
Obedience.
If we ask children to clean their rooms and return finding that they’ve written us a story. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be happy. In fact, while it may look like they are trying to please their parents, they really are just pleasing themselves.
So what’s the first step toward obedience?
- Know the authority of Jesus. Could I walk into The Lodge in Canberra, say ‘G’Day’ to Prime Minister Turnbull and make myself at home? Nope. I’d be reprimanded for even trying. But what if I was Turnbull’s kid? Sure, no problem, I’d walk right in. In the same way, as a child of God, we get to live with Him in heaven. We are His kid, but we want to do Him proud.
- That means we need to know what God wants. We need to be reading His words, (the bible) in context, and regularly. Just like we need to eat physical food, we also need spiritual feeding.
- We need to act out what the scriptures want us to do! We will fail at this. No question. But our attitude needs to be having a crack!
And the great thing about Jesus being our leader is that unlike us humans, He will never leave or forsake us. Yep, that’s who I’m trying to follow.
