“I want to be a follower of Christ. I want to be one of his disciples. I want to live in the newness of life. Just let me be a follower of Christ.” (Published in 2012 by J.W. Harris)
The lyrics above are sung Sunday after Sunday in churches around the country, usually at the time adjacent to when the preacher is presenting an invitation to discipleship. When you sing it, do you take it as a persistent invitation to one who can come and confess Christ as her/his personal Savior and Lord, or do you sing from the perspective of a personal intention? In many cases, the former would be the answer, and many would agree it has been sung so many times that it becomes filed in individual minds in the place reserved for church rhetoric.
Now, granted we sing it with voices reaching a high level, and the emphasis is not placed on verbosity, but rather the very opposite. The opposite being succinctness. “I want to be a follower of Christ. I want to be one of His disciples. I want to walk in the newness of life. Just let me be a follower of Christ.” Although there is more than one verse to the song as composed, we concentrate on those four phrases I just repeated. The energy by which we sing these words escalates to a level where the sanctuary is saturated with resounding sincerity. But the question must be posed again: When you sing it, do you take it as a persistent invitation to one who can come and confess Christ as her/his personal Savior and Lord, or do you sing from the perspective of a personal intention?
Truthfully, only you can answer that question with the utmost integrity. However, I honestly this we should be singing it to express a personal intention. After singing it, I think, just my opinion now, we should evaluate to the degree of our expressed desires in the hymn. We should be reminded that Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me (Luke 9:27).” I look at this as communicating that to follow Jesus, we must go beyond our comfort zones. In addition to remembering what Jesus said in The Gospel According to Luke, we should also be reminded of Jesus’ dialogue with the man who ran up to Him in The Gospel of Mark. Jesus says to the man, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come follow Me (Mark 10:21).” The man heard these words, and went away with a sad face, for he owned much. He had some interference in his life that kept Him from being a follower of Christ, one of His disciples.
The next time you sing the often-sung invitation song described above, perhaps even on this Sunday, you can assess if you are singing the words from the perspective of a personal intention. Here are some questions to help your assessment. Is your stuff ranked higher than sacrifice? Are your possessions ranked higher than putting yourself in the position where you are truly a follower of Christ? Does “much” supersede making a priority out of following the Master? Do you have a limit of what you will let go of and that limit is not letting you humble yourself to be a follower of Christ, one of His disciples? Whatever your assets may be, are they acting as roadblocks to you making the declarations in the aforementioned song an actuality?
Let me close with the same inquiry made in the introductory paragraph, “When you sing it, do you take it as a persistent invitation to one who can come and confess Christ as her/his personal Savior and Lord, or do you sing from the perspective of a personal intention?” Think about it, my friend. Be blessed!
Committed to the climb,
Mark L. King