You Are the Boss of Me

My mother was a saintly woman but even she could be pushed too far. I remember one time she was making her way slowly with her walker from one room to the next and and I was telling her what she should do and not do. She stopped, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re not the boss of me.” It’s pretty bad when your 80 year old mother puts you back in your place.

I thought about her as My Pastor Wade was preaching on Sunday. We all have that tendency toward independence. In most cases, that’s not a bad thing.  But in our Christian life we have to be the followers and surrenderers (Is this a word?). We need to follow Christ and surrender ourselves to pattern our life after The Word of God.

My Pastor Wade took us through the early ministry of the disciple Peter (pre-apostle.)

Jesus originated the contact with Peter. He just looked at him and basically said, “I am the boss of you and I will completely overhaul your life into something you have never experienced before. But you have to stick with me.”

Matthew 4:18-20 While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men." Immediately, they left their nets and followed him.

The disciple Peter had a struggle with the “who’s the boss” part of his life in the beginning of his pursuit of Christ. Sometimes he got it right and sometimes he asserted himself way beyond his place of total surrender.

I can’t be too critical of Peter because he just lived out loud my struggle. I can easily follow Jesus until He steps out of my comfort zone and beckons me to follow. Then, I must confess, the old independent me (or is it scared me?) stands still and says, “You’re not the boss of me.”

My Pastor Wade said in his sermon, “He loves you as you are but He loves you so much He won’t let you stay there.”

And He won’t let me stay there .He didn’t let Peter stay in his beginning place but with love and patience molded him from a lowly uneducated fisherman into a bringer of the Gospel of Christ to his world. He is using great love, grace, and patience to realign me into something that resembles Him too.

I like what Charles Spurgeon said in his sermon “How to Become Fishers of Men” - When Christ calls us by his grace we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what he can make us. It is, "Follow me, and I will make you." We should repent of what we have been, but rejoice in what we may be. It is not "follow me, because of what you are already" but, "follow me, because of what I will make you." It doth not yet appear what we shall be.

My job is to surrender and follow.

His job is to make me into a new person.

He is the boss of me.