I
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back
No turning back
A beautiful song I learnt in Sunday school so many years ago. So simple even a child can sing, but so difficult even an adult cannot sing. I’ve heard this song so many times when I was young and to me it was just one of the many, many, songs I learnt. I’ve recently re-visited this song and I realised I couldn’t finish singing it because halfway through my words were choked with tears. Only recently have I understood what this song really means.
I have decided to follow Jesus
Mark 1: 17-18 - “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed Him.
Making that first decision to follow Jesus was really difficult because it meant casting everything aside and simply following Him. For me, that initial decision happened many years ago in primary school when I realised that God is too amazing to be more than a figment of my imagination. I reasoned that if God can create plants such that no two leaves are the same, then what more complex things like cells and body systems. There has to be a God.
Only later did I come to leave all my safety nets behind and choose to follow Him all the days of my life. That happened after junior college during a low moment of my life when I realised that only He can heal my deepest hurts and only He can accept me as I am – 100%; without any fear of rejection whatsoever. Men fail us, but God never will.
The world behind me the cross before
me
I John 2:17 – The world and its
desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
It’s a constant struggle to be in the world but not of the world. I’ve been in inner turmoil a countless number of times, struggling with the concept that we live at the crossroads between things of worldly value and things of God. Fame, money, power, sex – the ways of the world that are all so alluring and so easy for me to want to cling on to. Not to say we totally abandon such things and live a life as a recluse, but rather that we put the things of God first. I’m still learning to put the things of the world behind me and the things of the cross before me. It’s a gradual process, but as a piece of clay takes time to be moulded into something beautiful, so I’ve come to take it one step at a time.
Though none go with me, I still will
follow
1 Samuel 3:10 – the Lord came and
stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel
said, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.”
C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia told the story of one little girl Lucy who was asked by Jesus (represented by Aslan the lion in the story) to follow Him regardless of whether her other friends followed. I remember reading of how her friends ridiculed her and refused to follow her, saying that her stories were merely of illusion and self-delusion. One night Jesus asked Lucy to pack up her things and follow Him. Gathering her possessions and her courage, Lucy woke the others and tried to get them to follow. They refused. With tears in her eyes, she took her things and followed Jesus. I remember that when I read to that point in the book I broke down and cried, because I knew how difficult it is to follow Jesus when no one else seems to do so. It takes great courage and strength of character.
Luke 14:26-27 –If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
I first remember this verse during a bible
study session in my university days. It really struck home that there’s no
turning back once we decide to follow Jesus as His disciple; that unless we love
Him so much that our love for other things seems like hatred, we cannot be His
disciples. Tough calling. Tough decision. But I’ve come to realise it’s more
than worthwhile taking up my cross and coming after Jesus. The joys that I’ve
felt and the numerous insights I’ve gained have more than made up for the pain
and the sacrifices I’ve made. And what pain and sacrifices have I experienced
at all – compared to the greatest sacrifice made – when Jesus died on the
cross to take away the sins for all mankind. That Jesus died for me. For
there’s no greater love than when a man dies for his friend. Jesus was that
man.
I
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back
No turning back
This
article was written by Mark Lim Shan-Loong on
29th May 2003.
Words from the Heart
