An Open Door - Day One

The theme of this year's missions conference is the Open Door. This series of blog entries will help you take to heart the message of the conference and put it to practice in your own life.

Let's start by looking at Mark 1:16-17. It is a familiar story. Simon and Andrew are fishing, using large nets in the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, walking along the shore, beckons them and calls, "Come on! Come follow me...I'll make you fishers of men!" The Bible adds, "at once, they left their nets and followed him."

Jesus is calling again to day. He's beckoning you to join him in the adventure of a lifetime.

I want you to ponder a several things. First, Jesus was interested in a relationship with them. He is interested in a relationship with you. He is inviting you to join him. He knows all about you: your gifts, your fears, your sins and your situation. Still, he calls you into a relationship with him. This isn't about joining a church, or becoming more "religious", whatever that means. Its about accepting an invitation to "do life" with Jesus.

Second, Jesus promises that something else is going to happen: they will become fishers of men. Jesus is going to change their priorities. No longer will they be working to bring fish into the boat. Instead, they will be working to bring people into the Kingdom of God. Jesus is going to take their relatively mundane lives and transform them into something powerful. Their lives will have an eternal impact. Jesus wants to do the same thing in our lives.

Finally, Simon and Andrew were forced to make a decision. They had to decide whether they would follow Jesus or not. I suppose that it would have been possible for Jesus to sit down with them and spend some time letting them get to know him and talking to them about how this whole "fishers of men" thing was going to work. Or perhaps the view of some scholars that Simon and Andrew had met and talked to Jesus before the encounter at the Sea of Galilee is right. In that case, they already knew something about Jesus and fishing for men. In the same way, Jesus might allow us to get to know him and to learn something about "fishing for men" by going to church, attending Bible studies, or reading this blog article.

But there is a time when Jesus will start walking (Mark 1:19, 21). Then we will be faced, like Simon and Andrew were, with the decision of whether we are going to follow him or not.

The time will come when we have to decide whether this "Jesus thing" is actually going to affect how we live. Will we leave our nets to follow him? Where is he going? If we follow him, where will he lead us? Jesus didn't tell them. And he doesn't tell us. He simply promises to be we with us as we become fishers of men...fishing among all the nations of the earth (Matt. 28:29-20).

Are you willing to follow him?