Follow Me
READ
Most of us have a sense that following Jesus matters. But there's something about the way He actually called His first disciples that cuts through the familiar and lands with fresh force every time. No application. No theological exam. No trial period to see if they were ready. Just a man walking along a lakeshore, finding a few fishermen in the middle of an ordinary workday, and saying two words that would redirect the rest of their lives: Follow me. And they did — immediately, without hesitation, leaving behind more than you might initially realize.
Let’s take a moment to read Matthew 4:18-22:
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once, they left their nets and followed him.
Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
REFLECT
What strikes you first about this story is probably the speed of it. Jesus calls, and they follow — immediately. Matthew uses that word twice, which means he wants you to feel it. There's no recorded deliberation, no conversation about what it will cost or what they'll get in return, no time given to think it over. Just a call and a response, as if something in them already knew this was the moment they'd been waiting for without knowing they were waiting.
Jesus finds Peter and Andrew casting nets, and James and John mending them with their father. These are working men, and fishing isn't a hobby for any of them — it's their livelihood, their identity, the trade their fathers handed down to them. It's the shape of their whole lives. And Jesus looks right at them in the middle of all of that and says, essentially, bring all of it, and come with me.
His invitation — I will make you fishers of people — doesn't ask them to become someone different. It takes the language of who they already are and opens it up toward something they couldn't yet imagine. He meets them in their ordinary and calls it toward something extraordinary, which is still very much how He tends to work.
What they leave behind is worth pausing on, too. Peter and Andrew leave their nets — their security, their income, the thing that feeds their families. James and John leave the boat and, notably, their father. In the culture Jesus was walking through, walking away from your father's trade wasn't just a career change; it was a significant reordering of loyalty and identity. And yet they go. Not reluctantly, not after a long wrestle — they just go. Something about Jesus made the leaving feel less like loss and more like the most natural thing in the world.
That's what a genuine encounter with Jesus tends to do. It doesn't make following Him feel primarily like sacrifice, even when sacrifice is involved. It makes everything else feel smaller by comparison, because you've just seen something truer and more alive than what you're leaving.
The disciples didn't follow Jesus because they had Him fully figured out — they followed because something in them recognized that this was the call they were made for. He is still calling people in exactly the same way, right in the middle of their ordinary days, asking not for perfection or preparation but simply for a willing yes.
RESPOND
Take a moment to process what God might be leading you to do in light of what you read.
Peter, Andrew, James, and John all responded immediately to Jesus's call. What do you think made that kind of response possible for them? What tends to slow your own response down?
Each of them left something real behind — nets, a boat, a father. Is there something you sense Jesus might be gently inviting you to loosen your grip on in order to follow Him more freely?
Jesus took the language of their everyday lives and used it to describe what He was calling them into. How might God be doing something similar with the ordinary details of your own life and work?
REST
Take a moment to rest in God’s presence and consider one thing you can take away from your time reading, then close your devotional experience by praying:
Jesus, thank You for coming to ordinary people in the middle of ordinary days and seeing something worth calling. Thank You that You don't wait for us to have it all together before You invite us in. Soften the places in us that hesitate and hold back, and help us hear Your voice clearly enough to respond with open hands. Show us what we might still be clinging to that makes following harder than it needs to be, and remind us that wherever You lead is better than anywhere we'd wander on our own. Amen.