Where Do We Go From Here?

In A Disciple's Path we defined a disciple as "a follower of Jesus Christ whose life is centering on loving God and loving others." The continuing present tense indicates that discipleship is an ongoing process of continued growth through which we are becoming more and more clearly centered in our commitment to Christ. Having made that directional decision, the question becomes Where do we go from here? In other words, what is the direction or goal or end toward which the journey of discipleship is taking us?

Benjamin Ingham was searching for that sense of direction early one morning when he made his way through Oxford to John Wesley's apartment at Lincoln College in the spring of 1734. Ingham was drawn to Wesley out of an unrelenting desire for a "holy" life. He was looking for practical ways to develop a richer, deeper, more faithful life as a follower of Jesus Christ. Under Wesley's guidance, Ingham was drawn into a small group with a few other students who met weekly to encourage each other's faith, to hold each other accountable to their spiritual disciplines, and to serve the needs of the poor.

Ingham's journal models the defining elements of discipleship in the Wesleyan tradition.

• It begins as a response to a gnawing, soul-level hunger for a closer relationship with God.

• It involves a personal commitment to become a more faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

• It is formed by specific spiritual and personal disciplines through which the Spirit of God can be at work to continually form us into the likeness of Christ.

• It is lived in community with other disciples who encourage our growth and hold us accountable to our spiritual disciplines.

• It moves us into the world in loving service to others, particularly to people in need.

This week we will discover how the disciplines that enabled the spiritual growth of the early Methodists at Oxford can become practical tools by which the love of God revealed in Jesus transforms our hearts into the likeness of Christ.

Week 1: Day 1

What Are You Looking For?

Scripture Readings

Read John 1:35-42 and Mark 1:16-20.

Today's Message

Everyone who goes fishing has his or her own fishing story. I remember meeting my son-in-law's ninety-something-year-old grandmother, who lived her entire life along the river in the low country of South Carolina. She was a tiny little woman who grabbed my hand with a stronger grip than I expected and showed no intention of letting go. I said, "I hear you like to fish." She looked me straight in the eye and said, "Yep. And I think I hooked a big one this time." It was her way of welcoming me into the family.

All four Gospel writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—tell the story of Jesus and the fishermen. But like most fishing stories, each one has his own way of telling it.

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus finds Simon and Andrew casting their nets into the sea because, after all, they were fishermen (Mark 1:16). What else would you expect them to be doing? "Fishermen" defined who they were. "Casting their nets" was their profession. It described what they did to make a living. It was the ordinary pattern of their ordinary lives. Jesus shows up as an unexpected intrusion into their ordinary, net-casting, fish-catching lives. But it turns out that Jesus is the fisherman casting the net this time. He offers them an extraordinary invitation that would change the direction of their lives.

"Come, follow me," he said, "and I'll show you how to fish for people." It was an offer they couldn't refuse. For reasons they probably could never explain, "Right away, they left their nets and followed him" (Mark 1:17-18). Jesus hooked two other fishermen named James and John the same way.

John's version begins with two "spiritual seekers" who have been listening to the preaching of John the Baptist. Dissatisfied with the way life is, they are casting their nets to find a richer, deeper, fuller life in relationship with God. I've known people like them in every community I've served. They are honest skeptics who are not satisfied with simplistic answers to complex questions. They are searching for a faith that makes sense in their brains even as it makes a difference in their hearts.

Jesus greets them with a question. "What are you looking for?" (John 1:38). They say they are looking for a rabbi, a teacher, someone to show them the way to live in a new relationship with God. Jesus offers the invitation, "Come and see." John says, "So they went and saw" (1:39). In fact, they spend the entire day checking Jesus out. At the end of the day, Andrew runs off to tell his brother, Simon, that he has found what he was looking for, and he invites Simon to come and see for himself.

Same fishermen. Different stories. Our tendency is to call out the fact checkers to find out which version got it exactly right, but that's not a question the Gospel writers have any interest in answering. There was no attempt to merge them into one event. They hang both stories out there as if to say, "This is how people meet Jesus."

Sometimes Jesus finds us. He shows up as an unexpected intrusion into our ordinary, busy lives. But we somehow know that if we pass up the invitation to follow him, we will miss out on one of the most important opportunities that ever came our way. It's a lot like falling in love. Sometimes it happens unexpectedly when a special person steps into our lives.

Others find Jesus through an arduous search. Dissatisfied with the way life is, we are looking for something more. During a time of spiritual exploration, we receive the same invitation, "Come and see." We read the story and check out the evidence for ourselves. Along the way we discover in the words, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the one for whom we had always been searching. We discover that Jesus has been what Francis Thompson called "The Hound of Heaven" who was searching for us long before we began searching for him.

However the invitation comes, the decisive moments are those times when we make a commitment to leave our old nets behind and take the next appropriate step in following him. We turn from our past and choose to follow Jesus, not because we know all the answers to all our questions but because we know that he is the one who can lead us toward the answers—that he is the one worth following. We commit all that we know of ourselves to all that we know of Christ, knowing that we still have a lot to learn. The Gospels call this experience repentance. The word literally means to turn in a new direction.

That's when God's work of heart transformation begins. One of the words we use to describe that change is conversion. Like shifting from using a PC to a Mac, it involves a conversion from one operating platform to another....