The world is a very busy place. Our lives are sometimes very complicated. Everywhere we turn there are distractions. Add to all this the increasing number of people with virtually no attention span or diagnosed ADD and you have a reality where it can be quite hard to stay focused and committed to any task at hand.
When you were called to follow Jesus, he knew that the call came in the midst of all this chaos. He understood that you would be pulled in every direction. That is why he urges you, as he did his first disciples, not to look behind, but to forge ahead, proclaiming the good news to all who can hear. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran, described it in The Cost of Discipleship, Jesus asks for a “single-minded obedience.”
Bonhoeffer wrote, “The actual call of Jesus and the response of single-minded obedience have an irrevocable significance. By means of them Jesus calls people into an actual situation where faith is possible. For that reason his call is an actual call and he wishes it so to be understood, because he knows that it is only through actual obedience that a man can become liberated to believe” (Translated by R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan, 1963).
The reality is that we cannot, on our own, believe in and follow Jesus without turning ourselves over to him completely. The aspect of this that the world will never understand is that through giving all over to God, a person finds true freedom. By forsaking everything else for God, we gain everything. Good stewardship and mature discipleship needs this “single-minded obedience” to flourish. Without it, we will be constantly distracted and tempted to change course. A person with severe ADD may need a prescription. Any Christian seeking to follow Jesus needs something too: the grace that comes from giving over one’s self to God.
Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS
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