Tonight’s ‘Little Big Church’ looked at the subject of following Jesus. If we’re going to go for a walk, good shoes that fit are generally considered essential, and walking with Jesus is one of the ways we can describe being a Christian. Jesus asked people to follow Him (e.g. calling Matthew from his job as a tax-collector (Matthew 9:9) or calling Simon and the other fisherman from their jobs into a new vocation (Luke 5:1-11)).
Following Jesus might seem a little scary; His shoes are big to fill, as the saying goes! The children had a go at walking in Stephen’s shoes and found it wasn’t as easy as walking in their own:
Not everyone whom Jesus called decided to follow Him. The rich young ruler didn’t want to give up his wealth to follow Jesus (Matt 19:16-20) and we can be easily distracted by possessions and other things which stop us from following Jesus. Sometimes, we feel that walking with Jesus is a little bit lonely – rather like the person in the ‘Footprints’ poem who, when seeing only one set of footprints in the sand, assumed God had deserted them, rather than realising it was at those times that God carried them. As Moses reminded the Israelites, ‘There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son.’ (Deut 1:31) God is able to carry us when the going gets tough and in the meantime, we can walk with God every day of our lives.
