Follow Me: A Plea for Pursuit!

My birthday was seven days ago and even though I had planned to upload some posts earlier in the month, and definitely before my birthday (including a post on lessons learnt in the past one year), I never really got around to typing my thoughts out as I was wonderfully swamped with a different type of work leading up to my birthday week. You would have known what I’m talking about if you follow me on Instagram. 

And this is how I'd be starting today's blog post - soliciting for your followership and connection outside of this blog, especially on what I like to call the blog’s official Instagram page - @tyfaithsblog. Although I’m on other social media platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn, I don’t want to push my luck too much (lol) or better still, I’d rather you follow me on Instagram because you get to see my life as it is and read faster from me before detailed posts are uploaded here on the blog. My captions are usually filled with stories (serious and hilarious, but mostly hilarious), motivations; and my feed contains my other serenre (including my not so perfect dance skills; my really good voice when I sing; and funny reels here and there). In short, follow me to see for yourself and if you don’t like what you see there, you can unfollow at any time.

With that out of the way, let me start today’s post with a proper hello and welcome back to my Blog, where I share a little bit of everything infused into one (I should really look into a different tagline for my blog o or what do you think? Lol).

Because I’m still in that birthday mood, I’ll be merging the messages that should have come through in the 4 or so posts I should have shared this month into one. Scratch that. I have one message that has stuck with me all month, to share with you today. It kind of sums up the lessons I've learnt in the past year, as well as highlights where I'm at in my walk with God, something I really like to talk about (God).

On the 31^st of August, I was preparing for a presentation and out of nowhere, a thought (which I strongly believe was from the Holy Spirit) dropped in my heart to say “the only reason why you know so much about people is because you follow them.” It was very random. There was nothing happening around me to have warranted that thought; no prior discussion with anyone, no social media pressure or blues (you know those social media blues that come when you suddenly begin to feel like you’re losing relevance while someone else around you is gaining relevance and all other social media brouhaha – none of it was happening); no drama with anyone (social media related drama of course, since the first thing that came to mind was social media following)… It was definitely the most random message I had received from the Holy Spirit in a long time. So I pondered on it for a while; not intentionally, I must add. I actually thought I’d forget about it after a while, since it was very random, but days turned into weeks and one month after, I still remember it like it was yesterday I heard those words.

Anyway, since I couldn’t immediately decipher why God dropped the thought in my heart, I went on Instagram and posted the message in a caption and interpreted it the way my human mind understood it. Weeks later, I was in the shower, when a follow-up random thought dropped in my heart. It was Jesus’ words saying “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men”. Again, nothing was happening around me to inspire these words. It was as random as the first one, but I quickly identified what the two random messages had in common – follow. So I deliberately pondered this time, and here's the light I saw and the crux of today's post.

To follow means “to go after; to pursue; to move behind in the same path or direction; to go or come after in a sequence; to carry out; to live one’s life according to something (a teaching, religion, doctrine, recipe, etc); to trail and so on…” - and in all of the numerous definitions of that word, two common actions stand out – a decision and movement – for the purpose of achieving one ultimate goal, i.e. whatever it is you're following or the destination of your followership.

When the first random message dropped, I immediately thought “oh, this is easy to understand. Follow God with the same energy with which you follow people on social media and your relationship with God will be rock solid”. As a matter of fact, that was the long and short of the post I made on Instagram regarding that message. But when the second one dropped, I thought of how Jesus continually talked to his disciples about following Him; how He told them (and by extension us) to be ready to deny themselves of things that mattered to them so that they could take up their cross and follow him; how even though he had 12 disciples, not all of them were taken to the Mount of Transfiguration because being a disciple doesn't equate followership (despite the literal meaning of followership that includes being a disciple);  how Peter was grilled several times all in a bid to confirm if he was serious about following in Christ’s steps; and how Jesus himself constantly talked about him following in His father’s footsteps.

I tried to juxtapose what I thought these messages were about by relating it to our day-to-day lives; how we know so much about people we have never met just because we follow them devotedly on social media – you know those people whose pages you check to see if there’s any new post; you’re constantly on their stories and all; you don’t need to turn on post notifications sef because it has become routine for you to check their pages and it almost seems you know everything about their lives; how we know so much about the friends we’re constantly in touch with, again because the communication is constant and you tell each other everything. Now imagine that for some reason, you get cut out of your favorite social media page for whatever reason; maybe that person takes down their page or Instagram bans them or maybe they just disappear into thin air and you can’t find anything about them online; or you lose touch with your best friend. Maybe he or she relocates and time zone is so different, it’s so hard to catch up like you used to; or they don’t relocate but they have a new demanding job and you can’t catch up like before… and maybe you don’t give up, you try to keep the friendship going but it becomes a chore, so you slowly begin give up and the friendship wanes. Life will go on, right? It's not that big of a deal, especially if you're like me who is growing into this girl that no longer takes things personal (I used to be chief of take-matters-to-heart-and-die-there in the past 😂).

If the above is your thinking, trust me, we're on the same page. The first message would make sense in that light. You won't know so much about those people anymore, because now, you don't necessarily pursue, go after, move behind in the same path or direction as they do; all those inspirations you get to look, act or dress like them will fizzle out without you trying. It's just how our mind works. What you don't devote your time, thoughts and energy to doesn't hold as much relevance or becomes less important. So you lose touch, but the good part is, it really has no terrible consequences because your life goes on, so does the life of the other person (you just may not know the details of how their life is going).

However, this seems easy until there is a major connection between you and the other person - a business partnership/relationship, a marriage, a mentor/mentee relationship, something deeper than the surface followership without benefits of any sort. Once you have vested interest in something or someone, it becomes a part of you to follow them, sometimes in a monitoring-spirit type of following, especially when money is involved 😂, other times, it's just what is expected of you, e.g. the way your child follows your patterns and actions.

The call to follow Jesus becomes easier to grasp if you think of it in this light. It makes the routine of communing with God through prayer and study of the word less cumbersome to understand and practice. I used to get really tired of morning devotion, because for me, it was just some routine that helped me gain access to God in case an emergency pops up during the day. A "I will have mouth to ask God to come to my rescue" type of phenomenon because I have said my prayers in the morning.😂 And the message of Jesus saying we need to deny ourselves of everything to follow Him didn't make it easier. But when these words dropped in my heart two weeks apart, the Holy Spirit helped me see that it only seems difficult when we try to do it by our physical strength.

Your favourite social media influencers have done nothing to warrant the love you have for them, neither has your best friend. All they've done is show up every day in your faces in their unadulterated selves or whatever persona they want you to fall in love with, and slowly you have accepted their persona and all they stand for because you take it upon yourself to follow their lives closely. You don't think about it, but you are actually investing energy into building a relationship with them. The downside is ultimately, you have nothing to gain from them (at least most of them) but they have everything to gain from you (think about it). 

No benefit is guaranteed from following anyone, but with God, it's different. I lament about adulthood more than I should. Sometimes I catch myself right in the middle of the lamentation and I call myself to order, switching to praise. But despite this lamentation, I don't want to be a child again, neither do I want to die. 😅 However, there is a guarantee of eternal life if I follow Jesus. And honestly, that's enough motivation to sit there, remain there, die there even when I don't fully understand His ways and instructions, especially the denying one's self of everything part. I don't get it sometimes, but I'm such an oliver twist. I want to be a fisher of men - live a life of impact, spread hope, be the light wherever I find myself and ultimately become like Christ.

But all of the above wishes will only remain as wishes if I don't pursue the knowledge of Christ. And I got an A+ in understanding and interpreting what the Holy Spirit asked me to tell you today. It's the action to PURSUE like you have something to lose if you don't get it, which you do. With our friends and social media faves, there isn't much to lose, and that's why we don't say we're pursuing them, we're just following. But with God, we need to PURSUE, in the sense of chasing after. It takes conscious effort to do this, but it is doable through the help of the Holy Spirit.

All month, this is the one message that has stuck with me (and now that I think back in retrospect, this is the biggest lesson I have learnt in the past year) - to follow Christ with all my heart;  to check in with Him on every little thing the same way I check with my friends for advice; to live my life according to Christ's; to pursue the same things that Christ would pursue, which is to do the father's will; to become a fisher of men; to be the light; to be after all that makes His heart beat.

And I'm urging you to do same today. You will only know so much and grow in your walk with God if you follow Him.

Are you "following" Him?

***

That's it people.
That's my message for today. And I hope this message speaks to you to realign the things you pursue, like it is doing for me.

Thank you for reading till the end.

See you in October.😉

*Serenre: no actual meaning but I use it to depict the many sides of my unseriousness.