Matthew may be my favorite apostle.
It’s really hard to pick a favorite, but I have always appreciated him.
In the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the story of Matthew becoming a follower of Christ is pretty much the same. In his own gospel, Matthew writes that he was sitting in the tax booth where he worked, and Jesus saw Matthew, and told him to follow Him. Matthew got up and followed him. Mark writes almost exactly the same thing. Luke adds a detail that I love. Luke wrote in chapter 5:28, “ … and leaving everything, he rose and followed him.”
Leaving everything, Matthew followed Jesus.
Our culture is really good at trying to have a little of everything, ya know? We want lightening-fast food with a Cracker Barrel level of customer service. We want comfortable homes with running water and electricity while so many through the world live with so much less. And sometimes, we want to follow Jesus, but we have a hard time leaving everything.
Our habits. Our relationships. Our plans. Our own desires, pride, opinions.
But the apostles did.
So what does this look like in our lives today? Does God expect us to leave our jobs and families and start spreading the Gospel?
Luke 9:23-24 says, “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’”
This denying of oneself is the process of aligning our will with His and choosing to follow Him for the rest of our lives.
Becoming a disciple of Jesus means that we no longer do things on our own initiative. We don’t make our own decisions based on what we want, but the Lord directs our steps (Proverbs 16:9). We make sacrifices to follow Jesus.
We give Him our stuff, language, time, social media, relationships, money, hearts, thoughts, lives.
God is not an item on our checklist, but He is found in every item on it.
Paul famously writes, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
This should be our motto, our anthem. This should describe our lives just as it did Paul’s.
What can you, and should you, sacrifice and leave behind for Christ? Do you have a lot of stuff you could live without? Are there tasks and plans you could scribble out of your planner? What about that hour you spend on social media in the evenings, might you spend that time with your family?
Remember the sacrifices those 1st century disciples made, and model after them.
