Faithful Followers

 “Now John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.”” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭9:49-50‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Celebrities are reasonably marked by different well-known metrics of their follower-ship. Unlike in our social media days with ‘followers’ metric on different social media handles, the disciples of Jesus in the Bible days could readily count attendances at meetings, street crusades, and house fellowship. When John brought up such reports of a faithful follower scorecard before Jesus, he was apparently disappointed to discover that heaven has a different metric for assessing believers’ faithfulness. But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.” The question is “How can one recognize those who are not against Jesus by counting physical attendances, congregational participation, and material contributions?” The church is filled with many who do these things openly, but their hearts are far away from God. Whereas, there are many unknown followers of Jesus, who for unknown reasons follow the Lord without public recognition. Notwithstanding, all faithful followers have one thing in common: Their words and actions, either openly or secretly, can be generally assessed as not against the lifestyle of a true follower of Christ.

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