Leave Everything

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

LEAVE EVERYTHING

Luke 5:8-11

8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" 9 For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men."  11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

NIV

They left everything to follow Jesus. Does that mean all those fish too? This would have been the catch of a lifetime and surely the sale of all those fish would have brought Simon, James and John a handsome income. Of course at this point the three of them could have been thinking they will still do better to follow after Jesus because he can get them more fish again, yet he did tell them they would now be catching men. But still here is that one on one personally impacting experience with Jesus which causes a person to make some drastic change in their life. If Jesus had just come along the shore in a ho hum way, and stopped by Simon’s boat to have a chat while he was mending his nets and offered him the opportunity to follow after him, perhaps Simon would not have been impressed enough to change the pattern of his life. When Jesus does something outside the box, a miracle beyond the human norm, what other response can we have but to leave everything and follow him.  Simon will always be a fisherman, in fact we see him return to that after the death of Jesus, but then Jesus shows up again on the shore, and Simon is once again faced with leaving everything. The point is Jesus makes a difference in our life. He changes the course of our life. He changes everything about us, if we leave all that and follow him. That is the clue to a changed life. We need to leave everything to follow Jesus. Now does that mean our jobs? It could. Does that mean our passions? It certainly does. As a non-believer our main focus in life is satisfying our own passions, desires or goals. All that we do, we do for ourselves. If we refuse to admit that we only are lying to ourselves. But when Jesus comes along and does the miraculous in our life, we have to leave that self-centered lifestyle and follow after him. That implies we change, the old has passed away and all things about us have been made new, we are a new creature in Christ, we have been born again. Does that mean we will never have self-centered thoughts again? It is more than likely we will in fact have thoughts about self even after leaving everything to follow Jesus. Simon Peter refused to be identified as his follower during the trial of Jesus, because he was thinking of self, rather than of Jesus, even after he was so vehement about following Jesus even onto death. We must learn that although we follow Jesus we too will have those moments of self-centered thinking, which of course is not the best thing, but we are not perfect yet. We fail, we fall, and we sin because we are but frail humans. Yet with all our faults, we follow after Jesus trying our best to leave everything beyond, understanding that Jesus will help us not be afraid, he has changed our life.