Thoughts before Conference

I know I have not posted in a while and really probably will become much more active after our Conference next week. I ask you for prayer this week as we seek to prepare ourselves. As I have prepared to go into the mission field I have been preaching on the Disciples and their time with our Lord. This is the result of having gone through a sort of metamorphosis myself in what it means to truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

One thing that has become so apparent is that God is truly speaking to me as I dive deeper into the time when Jesus called and taught these 12 men. The past few months have been spent searching the Come and See stage of Jesus' ministry found in John 1-4. I now am exploring deeper the Come and Follow me stage and for maybe the first time truly understand what was going on here in Mark Chapter 1 and Luke Chapter 5.

Andrew, Peter, John, Phillip and Nathaniel had been with Jesus for four months and gone back home to their fishing. And now Jesus has come to them after giving them time to consider their calling. They had tasted new wine and now the fish stunk and the net cleaning and mending which was their life before all seemed so trivial. He approaches them with the ultimate choice, "Follow Me."

I have known the Lord for many years. But it has been in a very real sense never beyond the Come and See stage. I have sought the Will of God and answered His call, but in many ways only as those first five did in the first four Chapters of John. I continued to fish and mend nets in my life.

I now find myself on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, tired if fishing and mending and fishing and mending, and Jesus is saying Greg, go out into the deep, and cast down your nets once more. And I'm ready. Ready to be faithful. That is what next week is about for us.

Pray for us. The closer this reality comes the more I find myself forced to fish and mend nets. That is what happens to us all. We are called by Jesus to "Follow Him" and we keep going back to our fishing and net mending. In a few short weeks I will be homeless, car less, furniture less, probably even job less for a while. Might even be money less. But I know for the first time in my walk with Christ I will truly have forsaken all, to follow Him, and become a fisher of men.

Who will go with me.....