I was informed about Jesus

Matthew 12:15-21

If you are a follower of Christ, why are you following Him?  That’s a question each of us should address, and I did not say if you are a teacher, a priest, a pastor, nor did I address the pew sitter, but a follower of Christ.  I’ve discovered in my own life that you can be any of the above and not be a follower of Christ.  So let’s look at why these people that Matthew describes as “many” were following Christ.

They were not followers at the beginning in the same way you and I were not followers of Christ, they were observers, and what did they observe, the healing of the man with a withered hand.  And as Matthew has stated, it was done in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and it did not please the keeper of the rules and tradition, in fact, they wanted to destroy him.  You may be thinking, but if Jesus were alive on planet earth today that would not be the case, how wrong your thinker would be.  I’ve watched Jesus live out His life in many a person, one is James Dobson the founder of “Focus on the Family,” that went from a two-person operation to a worldwide ministry.  I watched this man, a follower of Christ, stand for the family, for God, and he moved to the number 1 most hated man in America by the left, and if your asking why, because he was willing to follow the leadership of Jesus in a culture where both Christians and politicians had lost their spiritual backbone.

Now picking up Matthew’s account, “Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. And many followed him, and he healed them all and ordered them not to make him known. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.

I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.  He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory; and in his name the Gentiles will hope.”

Why did they follow Jesus?  For many reasons, but one that stands out is He had preformed an act of healing that was amazing, and of the many that followed Him, some of them were also in need of a healer.  So why have I become His follower: in Him I’ve found redemption, the only person who knows all about me, my thoughts, as well as my actions, and still loves me.  As a child and up into my late twenty’s, I was informed about Him, and if ask by anyone I would have said, I believed in both the Father and the Son, and yet it was more religion, I had no history, no understanding, that I could know Him personally like a friend.  I am so thankful for my barber who invited me to attend a Wednesday Bible study with four other guys.  Something had happened in his life that bothered me, my Barber was not a church kind of guy, my barber was a hell raiser, a man’s man, but he had changed right before my eyes and I wondered, why would he go to a Bible study?  For six months I attended that Bible Study, and I learned that if I, by faith in Jesus, would receive His grace invitation, that Jesus Christ would take up residence in my soul. 

I’m a deal maker, it’s the salesman in me, and for most of six months I made conditional deals with God, my conditions not His.  One night at about 10 pm in a hotel in Victoria, Texas, after coming from a bar, I opened the Bible in the drawer and it opened to Romans 10 and when I got to verse 9, I by faith confessed with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in my heart that God the Father raised Him from the dead, and I was saved, “Born again,” experienced redemption, became a new creation in Christ, but I did not become a follower for many years.  I cannot share the time or the date that I began to believe and to act like Jesus tells the truth, but it happened when I began a search for the truth.  And Jesus said; “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice