Four Stages of Following Jesus. Where do You Find Yourself?

Loved last night's FOLLOW class. Andy Stanley, in a video session called "Next Steps," used the scene from Luke 5 when Jesus started calling some fishermen to follow Him. Andy used the events in that story to talk about the four different stages we find ourselves in a journey with Jesus:

1, The "Sit and Listen" stage (Luke 5:1) - When we are investigating Jesus; listening to His teachings, exploring his actions and asking questions.
2. The "Loan Jesus our Boat" stage (Luke 5:2-3) - The place where move from beyond listening and we are willing to be slightly inconvenienced by Jesus. We may make the effort to come to a church service or a small group.
3. The "Fishing with Jesus" stage (Luke 5:4-8) - The moment we are willing to actually apply some of the instructions of Jesus, even if they don't seem to make sense to us.
4. The "Leave Your Nets" stage (Luke 5:9-11) - When Jesus moves from being a good teacher in our lives to acting as our Lord.

Can you identify where you are on this list? Maybe you are wavering between a couple of them.  Sometimes we surge ahead, other times we sense our forward motion is ever so slight.

Each one of these stages is a great place to be, but the encouragement of Jesus is to keep moving, keep following, keep stepping. They maybe small steps, and it may take some courage to get to the place we are willing to move to the next stage, but some movement is better than no movement!

FOLLOW is a CBC Interest Group and meets on Tuesday Nights from 6:30-8:00 pm in the Youth Lounge. We have 6 more sessions to go. Come check it out!