Following The Leader

In my last article, I wrote that wisdom is gradually learning to see reality through God’s eyes as we walk with Him. So, I wondered what walking with Him actually meant.

If so much of reality is presently veiled from my sight, what did Jesus mean when He said, “Follow Me”?

For a long time, I thought a follower was someone whose life looked just like Jesus—obedient, disciplined, loving, selfless, faithful. I never consciously used the word perfect, but looking back, perfection was hiding somewhere inside my definition. And because so much of my life doesn’t look just like Jesus, calling myself a follower of Him sometimes seems almost dishonest.

So my study started with a question:

When Jesus said, “Follow Me,” what was He actually inviting people to do?

Matthew 4:19 says,

“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.”

Both the Greek wording and the corresponding Hebrew expression for follow me carry the idea of a position: behind me, after me, come behind me.

That caught my attention.

Placing myself behind Jesus implies that I acknowledge that He is before me—not only in position, but in priority. He is greater than I am. His wisdom exceeds mine. His authority outranks mine. His will comes before my own.

To follow Him is to willingly take my place behind Him because I have come to recognize who He is.

He is the One leading, not me.

For this to be true, I must trust His lead, even when I cannot see where He is taking me.

Maybe following Jesus starts less with already looking like Him and more with where I have positioned myself in relation to Him.

Unlike modern students today, a disciple wasn’t primarily interested in gaining information. Discipleship did not just mean liking someone’s ideas or joining their cause. It literally meant to walk the same road and share a common life.

The goal was to stay so close to your Rabbi that you could observe his life, receive his correction, and gradually learn to imitate him.

Transformation wasn’t something you accomplished before you became a disciple.

Transformation was the point of becoming one.

The next words Jesus spoke seemed related.

“I will make you.”

Jesus doesn’t say,

“Become this, and then you can follow Me.”

He says,

“Follow Me, and I will make you.”

I thought I needed to become enough like Jesus to qualify as His follower.

But I had the order completely backwards.

First, He says,

“Follow Me.”

Then He says,

“I will make you.”

I was beginning to see that becoming like Jesus wasn’t a requirement I had to meet before I could follow Him.

Becoming like Him was part of the process of following.

He called me to come behind Him.

And He would be responsible for the transformation that happened as I remained behind Him.

So when Jesus promised to make the fishermen fishers of people, He was giving their lives a new purpose.

Following Jesus wasn’t only changing who they were becoming. It was changing what their lives were for.

But that still left me with another question.

If my role is to follow, what does following actually look like?

I had learned that follow Me described a position—behind Him, after Him. But knowing where I belonged in relation to Jesus still didn’t tell me what staying behind Him looked like in everyday life.

So I looked at another invitation Jesus gave:

“Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.”

After some research, I learned that denying yourself doesn’t primarily mean refusing to give yourself anything you want.

It’s actually a recentering of your life around Jesus.

It’s the internal surrender of leadership—giving up self-rule.

I give up my desires, ego, and agenda so I can say yes to His.

Self-denial isn’t being good at not wanting things. It’s learning that wanting something doesn’t mean I always have to obey the want.

Taking up my cross is external surrender.

It’s the visible manifestation of the internal surrender that began when I denied myself.

It means that when following Jesus becomes costly, I don’t drop the cross to save myself.

I keep following Him even when obedience costs me something—socially, physically, or personally.

Denying myself says,

“I am no longer the one in charge.”

Taking up my cross says,

“And I will continue to follow Jesus even when surrendering that control costs me.”

As a follower, I choose to trust Jesus to lead.

Following Him means I give up my position as the one in control and willingly place myself behind Him.

I don’t have to see where He’s taking me or understand why He’s leading me a certain way.

I trust that He sees what I can’t, understands what I don’t, and knows the way forward better than I do.

My responsibility isn’t to make myself look like Jesus.

Transformation is the fruit of staying behind Jesus, not the condition for getting there.

My responsibility is simply to keep following Him and trust Him with the transformation.

And “fishing for people” doesn’t necessarily mean changing careers or abandoning the ordinary pieces of my life.

My skills, my job, and my hobbies can become part of the net.

Following Jesus may not change what I’m doing, but it changes what I’m doing it for.

Being a follower doesn’t mean perfection.

It means recognizing the moments when I’m no longer following His lead and stepping back behind Him.

It means trusting God’s interpretation of reality over my own.

It looks like acknowledging that, as a created being, I have limitations—and as the Creator, He does not.

So when my desires, priorities, or behaviors don’t line up with His teachings, I give them up.

And when I pick them back up…

I give them up again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

As I was thinking about all of this, a childhood memory came back to me.

My Dad and I would walk through the woods in the dark, and I would follow behind him.

He had the headlight. I didn’t have a light of my own.

I could only see whatever his light happened to illuminate, but I didn’t need to see the whole woods.

I just needed to stay behind him.

One night, I followed him through a pond looking for frogs.

The water was up to my neck.

There was an alligator in the pond, and at one point a snake skimmed across the water right in front of me—eye level because I was so little.

But I remember that I wasn’t afraid.

My dad was there ahead of me. I was following him.

I didn’t have a map. I couldn’t see three feet to my left or right. But I had peace because my eyes weren’t fixed on the darkness around me. They were fixed on the back of my dad.

Maybe that is closer to what following Jesus through a veiled reality looks like than I realized.

I don’t need a light of my own illuminating the entire path ahead.

I don’t have to know what lies beyond what I can presently see.

I stay behind the One who can see farther than I can.

When He moves, I move.

When I can’t see, I trust what I know about the One I’m following.

Maybe following is something like learning to step back behind the One who sees what I can’t.