Our Bible verse for today: “As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter), and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea -for they were fishermen. “Follow me,” he told them, “and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Matthew 4:18-20 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “Following Jesus is the best thing you can do with your life.”
It’s interesting that as we read through the New Testament, we realize that most of the people God used to establish and spread the Christian faith were almost all simple ordinary people. Mary was a teenage peasant girl. Joseph was a simple carpenter living in a remote village. Jesus’ twelve disciples were mostly fishermen.
As we then proceed through the book of Acts and the epistles, we find that with the notable exception of Paul, virtually every faithful person mentioned in the New Testament was a regular person with no special skills or abilities – a person who had simply decided to follow Jesus by faith, and then to serve Him as best they could in the process of living their life.
This is also the story of the Christian faith over the two thousand years of its history. The overwhelming majority of faithful men and women God has used in His kingdom-building work were not kings and queens and Presidents; they weren’t millionaires and movie stars and celebrity athletes; they haven’t been Bible scholars and best-selling authors and television preachers with big hair and trophy wives. No, they have been ordinary men and women like you and me who simply lived their lives in a way that honored God.
I want you to know this morning that if you have faith in Christ as Savior, and if you are committed to following Him through this life as your Lord, then you have everything you need in order to live a meaningful life that is pleasing to God. Then, if you are active in the life of a good church, and if you are using your skills and abilities to serve God by serving others, you can believe that He is using your life to accomplish His purposes in this world. To you your efforts might not seem like much; the results might not seem splashy and note-worthy by worldly standards; but the fact is that your faithful life is contributing to the overall effort to make a meaningful difference for the cause of Christ in this broken and bleeding world of ours.
Following Jesus and faithfully serving others in His name is the most important thing you can do with your life. And I can assure you, it does make an important difference. Your life, and what you are doing with it, does matter.
Oak Hill Baptist Church