Mark 1:17 – And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.
In this amazing verse we find the very substance of our Christian faith, loving Christ and loving others. This calling to follow Jesus is somewhat like a proposal for marriage. “Come follow Me. Come and spend your life with Me.” It is an invitation into life itself. The second statement is the result of this first love we find in Christ, “I will make you a fisher of men”. These are the two basic ingredients in our Christian faith; to know and love Christ personally and to introduce Him to others. Here is how Barclay describes this passage.
“He said, ‘Follow me!’ It all began with a personal reaction to himself; it all began with that tug on the heart which begets the unshakable loyalty. This is not to say that there are none who think themselves into Christianity; but for most of us following Christ is like falling in love. It has been said that ‘we admire people for reasons, we love them without reasons’….
Lastly, we must notice what Jesus offered them. He offered them a task. He called them not to ease but to service. It has been said that what we all need is something in which to invest our lives. So Jesus called his disciples, not to a comfortable ease and not to a lethargic inactivity; he called them to a task in which they would have to spend themselves and burn themselves up, and, in the end, die for his sake and for the sake of others. He called them to a task wherein they could win something for themselves only by giving their all to him and to others.”
So this is what our lives are all about, to fall in love with Jesus and to help others find their lives in Him. This is how my life began back in that summer of 1973 on the shore of Lake Ponchartrain, “follow Me and I will make you a fisher of men”. That was over fifty years ago and He is still telling Me the same thing, “throw out the nets one more time and see what I will do”. Maybe you are new to this fishing business, we all start somewhere. Just find you a spot as near to Jesus as you can and you will see amazing things.