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Follow Me.
written by Michael McBane

Follow me, that is the demand of Jesus Christ to us. But the picture I see as I write is a man or women relentless in prayer and seeded with a vision planted in seasons past. They are bowed in a submissive posture. Jesus steps into the picture and interrupts saying follow me. They light up, thinking that the break through is upon them. But they do not get up and follow. Why? The way I have seen it is this. When Jesus came to those in the gospels and spoke deliberate instruction they did not say anything but yes. They dropped everything. In taking this step away from what they had found identity in they left the security of possibility and stepped into the incarnate God who had come upon them at a critical intersection of life and said, follow Me. They dropped all continuity to life as they may have know it. All expectation was redefined. They bore a stigmatism, again. They were possibly subject to the legit questions of but don’t you think if you waited on the Lord to establish you a little longer, after all you have paid such a price to be here. The demand of follow Me breaks the rules of life. Everything goes on the table and it stays, given back only if He allows it. Are these new rules? Not really, but we should be hearing differently then we did days ago.

We have been relentless in our radical cries and our faith has been enlarged multiple times over. We have tested God and we have been tested by the venture of our faith as it reaches out to simply touch the hem of His garment. Within this frame work why would Jesus come and say follow Me? There is not an answer that will accommodate reason. Our security is in a yielding of those sticky things that won’t let go inside. The things that we hold on to just in case this gets to wacky. If you have come this far my friends, you can not turn back. To do so would bring a misery that has no definition.

Because Christianity is fairly barren in leadership some serve to lead, to establish, to plant and to build.This seems good but we must not lead, we must follow. The authority in leading is in following with absolute abandoned resolve, continually. It is a renewing of the mind daily so that it does not allow an attachment to success and the definition contained therein to begin to stifle a creative dance formed in following.

At times there is a delicate balance found in following. It tests where we have been and strains it of anything that forms a callous obstruction to hearing the voice of God. Where we have been can often become a filter to hearing the next step of following. It can also give us the courage to step into the movement of God’s creative demand. Notice I offer demand in the container of creativity. Even when God destroys what was He has life in mind. He does not tear down to chide our heart with a sick or dark pattern of ruling over us. Remember He asks us to follow. I think we are in a time where this demand of love, Him asking us to follow is a constant. It is a demand that is clarifying our ability to hear His voice. Twice I say that it is important. We may have found disappointments litter around us but has we are renewed we will see mercy in the dance that we are in.

I believe we are in multiple junctures of reidentification. First we are being or should I say we are being given an opportunity to be deeply cleansed. Life can be cruel and we know people can hurl some unexpected dung at us when we don’t need it. Much has accumulated in our hearts, souls and minds that only Jesus can remove. Let us not take His blood lightly we must let it flow through us with a deliberate persuasion. Time to allow the amour of God to be reshaped, for we have grown, hopefully. It is time to let all the shame of life to fall to the ground and remain there, now we must again step forward. There are some things we have heard concerning God in past days and quickly attached ourselves to in agreement but that agreement has not necessarily formed life or brought fruit. Therefore we must prune what those identities have sown from our soil, our heart, our understanding. Our spirits must be free. We do not have the luxury of contamination willful or not. It is not a question of God’s love or grace I speak beyond this my friends. Jesus is revealing to us things that now must take root and be woven with the strength of a three cord strand. I set all in His hands so that I may travel light. It is time to get right with Jesus.

I along with my wife have come through perhaps the hardest season of our life. Perhaps it is so because they have been back to back with little reprieve for a very long time. It is not like a marathon run, though that may have been so at one time but of late it is an emotional and physical beating that leaves you hollow. I am not certain it is over but I do know God is with us. We have been stripped of things that I cannot define. Our sorrows have crashed against our thoughts and ridiculed our reason to points of emptiness that offered no recall. There is not much left to rally the troops with so when we do we know we are leaning on Him. In the past weeks our faith has been mocked and our remaining courage taunted by a possibility that had all the earmarks of God on it. We followed and it was like being brought to a dinner only to be ridiculed for what you wore. We could only say this is who we are, this is all we know. That is our only plan. We had no dog and pony show to reveal Christ. It was one of those times when we walk away in a stunned silence having no thoughts. If there were tears they came because something else triggered their fall. Are we desperate? I can’t use that word anymore. We want to follow Him.

I am convinced that the prayer of Jesus, some call it the Our Father, is so primary to us all today. Much that we have cried for consummating in the merger of heaven on earth is predicated on understanding and living within the entrance of this prayer. Hallowed be Thy name. I think it stops and begins there. If we do not allow that to saturate us we will not see as we must. We will carry things into this next season that will dilute the opportunity, the possibility, we will not carry the authority of Jesus as we should and must because we did not leave it all behind. I am speaking of a purity that allows for the Holy Spirit to remain. I write here of a stepping forward that allows Him to change our garments into His reality not our theory.

I might use this as my mission statement for the coming days.

To go to heaven is for me not the question, for that is not enough. I want to walk with God here and then and forever. Which means I get to rule with Him. Which is not in the terms some offer such as; I am a small king kinda of thing. No, it means I get to wake up in the eternal time frame and say, I get to follow the Lord today. I have been asked to follow Him. I get to shadow Him and place my hand in His and watch love and be love because I have allowed Him to rule in who I am now.

My wife said to me recently,” honey I fear we are miserable people?” I answer her in a weakened way, “perhaps, but I to cannot live like this where my ears are muffled, my eyes are dim and my tongue so dumb. Is it God who restrains us? Or is it our stuff, our twisted life that trips us from the possibility of truly following Him? I cannot point to God and say He has disappointed me. I fear that I have wrapped my head around doctrines that misguided my leap of faith. I fear that I have allowed the shadows of my life to capture my heart far to easily. God, the road is hard to see presently but I am willingly to follow, fill me with the reality of a mystery so big that I float away in a way that I am only captured my your voice of life.”

May these words awaken those who read them to the courage to follow Him as never before.