"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19 NIV).
Are your hands too full to enjoy life? Do you ever feel overwhelmed and almost dizzy with the busyness and urgency of the day?
You're not alone. Americans are suffering from a modern malady known as "burnout." We're over-scheduled, over-committed, and scatter-brained from information overload. There must be a better way to live!
There is, but it will require a radical step. We need to let go. That's right. We need to drop everything for a moment and reevaluate our lives. I think it was Socrates who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Far too many of us are living "unexamined lives."
I'm not proposing that we all become hermits and escape from this crooked, crazy world (although tempting sometimes). I'm suggesting that we need to look and see where all this busyness is taking us. We need to empty our hands of all the burdensome stones that we're carrying and carefully put only the important ones back.
How? I believe there is only one way. Follow Jesus. His is a simple call. He says, "Come, follow me." He also says, "Come unto Me you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."
We've made life too complicated, too full of rules and duties and responsibilities that we can't shoulder. Why not answer Christ's simple call to simply "Come and follow."
When we release our burdens and exchange them for the "easy yoke" that Christ offers, I've noticed that He calls us to three simple commitments:
1. A commitment to celebrate God's Son - to worship God first and to make Him our first priority, not allowing anything in life to crowd Him out of first place.
2. A commitment to connect to God's family - to recognize our need for fellowship with other believers, carving out room in our lives to live in encouraging, accountable, sharpening relationship with others.
3. A commitment to contribute to God's Kingdom - to focus our time, talent and treasure on investing in the only Kingdom that will last. Following Christ, He "makes us fishers of men."
Let's empty our hands for a moment and, following Christ's leadership, let's carefully put back only those commitments that He deems worthy.
Living the simple life means continually saying "No" to the world's urgent cry for our busyness and ordering our lives around simply following Jesus.
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