All my ducks in a row...

I read this morning in the gospel of Mark the story of Jesus calling his very first disciples. Mark 1:16-18 reads:

“As He was going along by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”

And the same thing happened a verse later with James and John. And again later with Matthew, and so on and so forth. Jesus called them, and they followed.

Now here are guys who are your standard, run-of-the-mill, middle-class Jews. They are moderately educated, they work hard, and they make a decent living. They’re not Hebrew scholars by any means, but they would’ve gone through the same schooling any Jewish boy did. I’m sure most people have heard that there was really nothing spectacular about these guys.

Fast-forward a few decades and Peter is crucified upside-down, James gets beheaded, Matthew is martyred in Ethiopia, and John is boiled in a vat of Pennzoil (how you survive that, is beyond me). All because they could not and would not stop vehemently preaching the Gospel of Christ and the story of God’s love for mankind; so much so that their enemies had to kill them to get them quiet. So how did these Average Joe’s get to that point?

Surely they watch the news, so they know who this Jesus guy is. So then Jesus comes rolling through and he just calls to them and says, “Come with Me” like Puff Daddy on the Godzilla soundtrack. And they do it unflinchingly, no excuses.

There’s no, “Well I don’t know enough,” or, “I’m not talented enough,” they just go. I’ve never had Jesus come into my work and just tell me to go somewhere with him, but I think the only reason I would go with him (and I truly believe I would) is because I already know and believe that he is the Messiah. These guys didn’t. They had an idea of who he was and they knew he was special, but they didn’t have close to the faith and love I already have for Him, and even still I’d probably hesitate.

And when I read this story this morning, for the first time it wasn’t their faith in Him that struck me, it was His faith in them. He knew they were unprepared and He knew there were people with better resumes, but here’s the kicker: He wanted to grow and mature them to be the men that he knew they could be. Jesus knew that with the right amount of teaching and love, these men would carry the weight of the Gospel on their shoulders and catapult His Church to the far reaches of the earth. And with these men Christianity came from a small group of “heretics” to the largest religion in the world and formed the worldview that I believe makes the most sense, not to mention that I believe is the truth.

So why is my default stance always to get all my ducks in a row? I’m careful to plan things out, think things through, examine all the angles… I call it preparedness. I call it efficiency. And none of those things are bad things. But I think God helped me realize today that those good things left unchecked have the potential of holding us back from great things because we may hesitate to move forward. What if James and John told Jesus to come back later because they were expecting a big haul of fish that week?

I don't have any specific examples, but is it necessarily a bad thing to not be adequately prepared for a given situation? Maybe it just takes a little more faith that when God calls us to something, we believe that He will be faithful to equip us to do it.

And that results in something truly amazing: Our faith in Him coming out of His faith in us.