Hosanna Restoration Church

From the beginning of creation, God has been pleading with us to trust Him, call upon Him, prove Him, believe Him, ask Him, follow Him, and the list goes on and on. He is the key to life. He knows that, and in fact He put a seed in all of us that knows that as well. The spirit longs for God, but the flesh wars against that longing. And so, the battle rages on and on.

When one of His followers told Jesus that He would come after he took care of some things, Jesus told Him to follow Him now. Jesus knew that if he did not come when he knew he should, it would be harder the next time the urge came. You see, we can either build up a resistance to Jesus or build up a resistance to the resistance.

Now is the time. With God it is always now. When we wonder what we should do, that is the time to follow Jesus. When we wonder if what we are doing is right, that is the time to stop and make sure that we are following Jesus. When interference comes and temptation comes, that is the time to immediately turn and follow Jesus. If we don’t, the path will get more and more difficult.

Jesus told the man to let those who were spiritually dead care for their own dead. Anything that takes us from Jesus takes us to spiritual death. This may sound too narrow minded, but we must remember that the enemy looks around continually seeking whom he may devour, and if someone can be redirected even a little bit they are in danger of defeat.

Of course we can always recover simply by turning to Jesus, but will we. Will we be strong enough to overcome our wrong choices and submit ourselves the Lord’s guidance? We certainly hope so don’t we? But why take the chance. Why when we are walking the path of His fullness would we want to go a different way? I know that we all do it, and I know that it is because of this war between the spirit and the flesh. I also know that the solution is simple. “Follow Jesus now!”

The only way we will do that is if we are determined to keep a watch on our hearts. We need to ask God to search us and keep us. We must be willing to acknowledge when we are being distracted and turn quickly to look into the face of our savior.

I am sure it sounded like a hard-hearted thing for Jesus to say when His disciple asked Him to allow him to go and bury his father, but Jesus knew it was a distraction that might keep the man from ever getting back where he needed to be.

Renew your commitment now to follow Jesus first in all things. The benefits are beyond what we can hope or imagine.