Following Jesus – He’s not on Facebook!

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”  Matthew 16:24

      If we’re not careful we can treat Jesus like a friend on Facebook. We can add Him to our list of friends we follow and occasionally tell him what’s on our mind, or click “like” on something He says in scripture, but not really follow everything He says. When Jesus said, “Follow Me” He meant it in a different way. He doesn’t want to be just a friend who is put alongside all the others; He wants to be the One leading. His type of “follow me” requires the follower to lay down their life and take up a cross. We don’t really like that type of following in our world today.

The world’s type of following adds you to its list of friends until it doesn’t like something about you and then blocks you or unfriends you, or allows you to be a friend because it wants to have the Facebook page with the most followers. It doesn’t really want to get to know you, however, it does want you to “like” everything it says, and make cute comments on the pictures it posts. Some of us aren’t quite like that. Some of us really like the friends and relatives we follow and those who follow us, even those who keep inviting us to play Candy Crush.

To “follow” has changed meanings over the years. It used to have these meanings –

Move behind in the same direction, to accept as a guide or leader, accept the authority of, to conform to, comply with; obey – to imitate or copy (Webster College Dictionary). Just to name a few.

But in the world today when we think of following, we simply think of the click of a mouse or tap on the pad and we are following and being followed. This generation has been raised in a computer literate society where most of our view of the world has been seen through a computer screen or monitor of some sort. Much of the new technology began with the word “I.” I-Pad, I-Phone, I-Tunes. Once we start there, with our focus on “I,” can it be any surprise where we end up? MYSPACE! …and following each other on Facebook. You follow me, I’ll follow you and it won’t really matter where we’re going as long as we all go together – as “friends.”

But Jesus doesn’t just want to be our friend. He wants the obeying, do as I do, kind of following that Webster took time to define in his book. It’s the same kind of following He also talks about in His book – the Bible; the hard kind that demands something of us that isn’t satisfied with the click of a mouse or touch on a screen. It’s the kind that takes us to the foot of the cross where He died, to pick up our own cross. It’s where our following really begins. He also wants to be our friend, but He is the kind of friend who was willing to die for us – and He did. He’s the kind of friend who loves us so much that He tells us the truth no matter how much it may hurt our feelings, because anything less than the truth isn’t real. He doesn’t just want us to feel good, He wants us to be good, and He is willing to show us how. That’s why He says, “Follow Me.”

I’m really not trying to bash Facebook, I reside there also. However, I do want to bash making Facebook THE book that we follow, when Jesus’ book is so much better. If you haven’t befriended Him, would you do so today? Just ask Him to show you how to be His follower.

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