Follow Me, and I Will Make You...
The quest for the best life is much more straightforward than you think.
Dear #DailyFollower,
I hope you had amazing Christmas Day celebrations. It was a delightsome experience for me with family and friends.
I also hope you had time to reflect on the reason for the season during the day's celebrations.
Today, I will share one of my Christmas Day reflections. This reflection will provide insight into why I started writing this daily newsletter as a first step toward building a community of followers who will actively follow Christ daily and partner with Him in what He is doing and blessing in our world.
The Christmas Day meditation I want to highlight centres around the statement Jesus used when calling His first two disciples to join Him on His mission to change the world, as recorded by Matthew and Mark in the gospel.
Jesus said, “Come ·follow me [be my disciples], and I will ·make you [teach you how to] ·fish for people [fishers of men].” - Matthew 4:19, EXB
Jesus said to them, “Come ·follow me [be my disciples], and I will ·make you [teach you how to] fish for people.” - Mark 1:17, EXB
I believe Christ’s call to all the other disciples had a form of FOLLOW and MAKE dynamic.
While there are no Scriptural accounts of every disciple's call, I reached this conclusion in my reflections because of the actions each “called person (disciple)” took after Christ called them.
On each documented account of a disciple’s call, the Scriptures tell us that they immediately left whatever they were doing before the call to follow Jesus.
Only a call to make someone more than they already are would draw that reaction.
Christ fulfilled His promise to His first disciples; He made them into extensions of Himself, and they laid the foundations of the Christian faith, which is now “followed by 2.4 billion people.”1
I continued to meditate on the biblical and historical accounts of the lives and times of Christ's first disciples (the 12 and the other disciples), and it struck me that the story of what they became following their encounters and time spent with Jesus can only be described as outstanding.
Then I wondered what degree of outstanding will describe my life as a follower of Jesus today.
One clear thought that resurfaced as I meditated was that I am (and I believe many other disciples today) missing something in the follow-and-make equation.
I reflected on how the balance of the follow-and-make equation has tilted towards the making part rather than the following part.
Take 120 seconds to assess your journey of following Jesus and think about most things on your prayer request list in this season of your life. If you categorised these requests into the ‘follow’ and ‘make’ rows, how many requests fall into each row?
If you were like me a few years back, I had a very heavy ‘make’ row; there were so many things I needed ‘made’ in my life, so I could feel that my life was counting for more.
Reflecting on that time in my life, I thought that since I had chosen to follow Christ, it was due mega-making that only God can supply, and that would be the evidence that empowers me to go out and become the witness that reel in people into God’s kingdom as He desires.
Sadly, my list for the mega-making that made me an effective witness only continued to grow longer, and my commitment to following Jesus’ footsteps as the master fisher of people didn’t match my desires for the things Christ needed to make in me.
I write this newsletter to call our collective consciousness to the imbalance in our follow-and-make equation in our practice of the Christian faith today.
I write this newsletter to explore ways to transition from ‘make‘ heavy Christian experiences to ‘follow’ heavy journeys with Christ.
I write this newsletter to create a community that encourages each member to do the good work of following Jesus and leaving the making part of our lives to Him.
According to Worldometer2, the world's population was over 8.196 billion on December 26, 2024, at 2:35 PM (BST). So, only about 29% of the world's population professes Christianity.
Here’s where my reflection ended: I was convinced that the harvest is plentiful even today, but the labourers are few. Once more, I prayed one ‘follow‘ prayer, which I ask you to pray with me today. I prayed as Christ prayed that the Lord of Harvest would send more labourers into the field.
Through this newsletter and other #DailyFollower artefacts, I hope to see more professing Christians go beyond identifying with the faith to reap its benefits and partner with the Author of the faith in the work He seeks to do to bring a vast harvest into His Kingdom.
When we partner with our Maker, we can be sure He will make us. He won’t just stop making us fruitful fishers of people; He will make us valuable people whose lives have meaning and impact on the world.
I would love to hear from you, so please use the comment section to share your thoughts about where you are currently with the follow-and-make dynamics. How much of your journey today is about being made versus being a follower?
Till you read from me again.
Yours faithfully,
One #DailyFollower
World Population by Religion: A Global Tapestry of Faith - Demographics Of Christianity, January 12, 2024, Population Education.