The Chosen
I’m four episodes into season 1 of The Chosen. I know, for a Christian blogger in 2023, this is probably bordering on shameful. I just don’t watch that much TV (typically I watch about an hour or two a month outside of family movie night). In episode 4, Simon (who will soon be known as Peter) is set to go to jail for his tax debt and has a sick mother-in-law at home. While Simon’s tax debt is not mentioned in the Bible, the way this episode approached Simon’s dilemma certainly brought home an interesting point for me.
Cost of Discipleship
Every sermon I’ve heard on the “drop your nets and follow me” story focuses on the complete relinquishment of all else to follow Jesus. Supporting this idea are verses such as:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple." -Luke 14:26 (NIV)
“Hate my family?” I don’t think I’ll be walking away from my children anytime soon, and I don’t think God would want me to. Yet, Peter, Andrew, James and John left their nets (careers) and their families to follow Jesus. Which always made me wonder…am I misunderstanding God?
Clearing the Barriers to Service
The way The Chosen depicts this piece of Simon Peter’s life resonated with me on a deep level. Simon had MANY barriers to following Jesus. Of course, he had a long way to go when it came to maturity and wisdom. And then there were his family responsibilities. He had a wife, perhaps children, to provide for. Despite what Luke 14:26 might suggest at the outset, Jesus did not ask Simon to abandon his family. However, he did ask Simon to love/prioritize his ministry more than/over all else.
Naming the Barriers
Try this with me. Close your eyes and imagine what it would look like to devote your life entirely to Christ. To surrender your own will entirely and allow the Holy Spirit to live in and through you, blessing the world as you walk through your days on this earth.
Take 10-15 minutes minimum to imagine this as vividly as possible. Then, ask yourself two questions.
- First, where are you pushing back because of logistic concerns? For instance, for Simon this would be “How am I to provide for my family?”.
- Second, where are you pushing back because of a hardness of heart? In this case, perhaps “I don’t know what God will ask me to do.”, “Will I be happy?,” “I’m not ready to give up my desire for ______.”
Let’s address these categories of resistance one at a time, starting with the easier of the two, but perhaps rarely addressed from the pulpit:
Logistics, logistics
When Jesus called Simon to follow him, he also cleared the way for that to be possible. Jesus provides for Simon and his family in three ways. First, he fills two boats with fish, providing between 12 and 36 years of money for each of the four disciples’ families (Simon, Andrew, James, and John) depending on how you calculate it. Second, he heals Simon’s mother-in-law, yet another indication that he desires the family of Simon to be cared for. Finally, though they travelled quite a bit, Capernaum (the disciples’ hometown) was Jesus’ home base.
Jesus straight handles it! Simon says, “Yes, Lord, I’m on board!” and Jesus says, “Here’s half a million dollars and a healthy family (who you’ll still get to see regularly)…Let’s do this!”
That doesn’t mean that Simon had it easy. The stories of the end of his life (persecution and such) show that discipleship does have a cost. However, that cost is NOT abandoning those you love.
You Don’t Have to Be a Stay-At-Home Mom Anymore…
In the spring of 2022, I, like Simon, was eager to enter service to God fulltime and full heartedly. For me, service still included (at least for the current season) being a mom to my two boys and a high school math teacher. But there were other callings on my heart to do more, callings I knew came from the Holy Spirit. A year later, in the spring of 2023, I felt the Spirit ask me, “Are you ready to go all in?…Are you ready to answer those callings on your heart?”
My answer was: “NO!” I thought of the impact on my sons–the combination of the time away from them and the emotional wear and tear on me would be too much for them. I thought I was being asked to choose between them and God, and I just couldn’t do that! Loving them was interwoven so closely with what I believed my life’s purpose to be.
The Dream
A couple nights later I had a dream. My grandfather (my spiritual mentor when I was young) and I were standing in his kitchen, and he handed me a letter. I could not remember most of what was written when I woke from the dream, but I remember the letter bringing me to tears of gratitude and appreciation.
However, one line stood out to me above all the others.
You don't have to be a stay-at-home mom anymore.
Though this might not make sense to you, the message was clear to me–I didn’t need to be worried about my kids’ well-being. They would be taken care of. Instead, I could “leave home” and stretch my wings in other forms of ministry. God would provide.
Leap of Faith
I trusted and made the jump. With that leap of faith, God jumped in and cleared away the barriers. Neighbors and friends began offering to take the kids at various times. The boys, due to their age, became very independent, needing less time from me (not less love). Their friends would come over and the boys would play for hours, giving me large chunks of time for my other hearts’ callings. Finally, multiple people came into my life to provide the emotional support I needed to counterbalance the strain of the service I knew I was made to do. In fact, I was less stressed than I was prior to the calling.
God had filled my boat with fish to the point of overflowing.
What are your excuses for following Jesus whole-heartedly? Are they truly barriers or simply perceived barriers? What if they disappeared–would you find new ones to take their place or leave your nets and follow?
Returning to Your Nets
The second set of barriers are not as easily cleared. Attachments to the world and our fears need to be surrendered to God again and again.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Matthew 16:25-26
For Simon Peter, after Jesus’ resurrection he is back fishing again, despite not needing the income. He is fishing not because of need but because of fear and perhaps shame for denying Jesus.
Jesus fills his and the fellow apostles’ nets once more, then invites them to shore for breakfast, where he asks them all, but especially Peter to “Feed my sheep.” For Peter, he asks the question three times, lifting the burden of shame from his shoulders.
Shifting Sand
Though I’ve seen God pull out all the stops the past few months for me, there are still more times than I’d care to admit that I either doubt His provision or don’t want to let go of my idea of the way things should go.
Will God really come through on His promises to me?
Do I have what it takes to balance the demands of the various callings that are on my heart?
Do I have to let go of my heart’s desire to follow you?
God, seriously, you want me to do THAT?
Each time one of these questions rises up in my heart, I hand it over. The first two questions about God’s faithfulness are ones I must surrender every day. For I know that fear keeps me from being my best, most joyful, most loving self.
As one of my favorite songs from my college days reminds me,
My faith is like shifting sand Changed by every wave My faith is like shifting sand So I stand on grace. -"Shifting Sand"-Caedmon's Call
I rely on God’s grace everyday to keep my fears at bay and to fill the sails of my heart with the winds of faith. And then, for those areas where I feel my desires clashing with the Spirit’s calling on my heart, I ask God to change my heart.
Changing My Heart
One part of what I believe to be in my future might mean that I will be limited in my ability to travel and see the world for a few years–something I was very much looking forward to doing as my boys are now old enough to travel with me easily. And yet, over the past year, as I prayed to have that desire changed, I’ve witnessed God’s faithfulness.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy traveling anymore (I do), but rather, I don’t feel the need to. God has changed my heart. It remains to be seen whether or not surrendering this will be necessary (am I understanding this particular calling correctly?), but God has proven to me that He will help me in the journey of surrender. Though I am keeping most of the details of what I am surrendering close to my heart for now, my desire to travel is a rather simple but important enough example to reveal what is possible.
For the Good
Yes, God will handle the minutae blocking your path to service. Yes, God can and will change your heart if you surrender it to Him.
But is it worthwhile?
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6: 66-69 (ESV)
From the day I surrendered my life to God until now, my life has been more joyful and more fulfilling than ever before, and it only seems to get better. As one of my friends/mentors shared, “This (a ministry we both participate in) is the most stressful part of my life…and that’s saying something!”
His point being, when you give your all to God, He will part the Red Sea for you. EVERYTHING is handled. This really is the well that springs up to eternal life, where you never get thirsty again. And the “stressful” ministry–well, if you call gathering a few fish and loaves of bread for Jesus to feed 5,000 people with stressful, then I guess this isn’t for you. I call it heaven.
Welcome home.