Who and what do you follow on Social Media and why do you follow them? I can be aware of my interests or what I’m watching by paying attention to what gets served up to me on various reels and shorts. For example, if I look at cooking and recipes on social media for a couple of seconds, my feed starts to populate with more stuff related to food, meal prep, etc. Whatever you watch or give time and attention to is what the computer algorithm will give to you.
I bring this to your attention because we humans tend to follow things that capture our interest, help us to solve problems or fix stuff, and give us answers and help in our life. This is true throughout all of history, and we see this play out a boatload with Jesus. Large crowds followed Jesus as you can observe throughout the Gospels.
A great example of this is in Mark 5 when the woman with the issue of blood pressed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. When she did this, Jesus stopped and asked who touched Him. In Mark 5:31, His disciples replied, “You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” Additionally, consider that Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people on two occasions and had leftovers to spare! Free meals and healthcare were clearly major attraction points for the large crowds that followed Jesus.
It’s interesting to note, however, that Jesus gave some pushback to such crowds, as we read in Luke 14:25-33. I’ve been giving some thought to these verses where Jesus challenges us in three ways to be genuine followers and not just groupies who flit across an array of interests and fads.
To begin, Jesus challenges us with our relationships, such that if we are going to be genuine Jesus followers, we need to love Him more than anyone else in our life—even more than family members. In Luke 14:26, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” Additionally, He asks His followers to count the cost of what it will take to follow Him. In doing this, He gives us two examples of cost counting: building a tower and going to war, as you can read in Luke 14:28-33.
In these two examples, Jesus is asking us to think about our achievements (building a tower) and our conquests (going to war). In relation to building a tower and looking at our achievements, Jesus could be asking any potential follower to pause and reflect on this truth: Being a genuine follower of Jesus is the greatest achievement in one’s life. To this end, it will cost time and consistent purposeful intention to follow Jesus over the course of our life.
As for His examples of war and conquests, perhaps Jesus is telling potential genuine followers to consider that we will have to conquer various things like our flesh, unhealthy habits, ugly mindsets, satanic attacks, toxic deceptions and more. We need to have our eyes wide open because genuinely following Jesus can be a battle!
As we wrap up and think about Jesus’ words to the crowds who followed Him, let’s be mindful that we aren’t just groupies chasing Jesus for a free lunch, effective healthcare and solving problems in life. Let’s keep our relationship with Him as our highest essential, along with recognizing that we need to keep our perspective on achievements and conquests in alignment with being a genuine follower of Jesus.
