Matthew 4:18-25 page 1

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My earliest memory of the Methodist Covenant Service is of my parents telling me that certain church members wouldn't be present at the service. They felt they couldn't say the Covenant Prayer and mean it wholeheartedly.

I was shocked. I couldn't understand as a teenage Christian how you could accept the terms of church membership and not be willing to say the Covenant Prayer.

I was to discover as I grew older in the faith that the tension over the Covenant Prayer didn't just exist for those who absented themselves from the service. Even many of those who came to the service were nervous about making such big promises annually to God.

Maybe you feel that tension [today or] when you read a passage like Matthew 4, where Jesus calls his first disciples. There seems such a discrepancy between the instant obedience of those men and their willingness to leave everything behind and our struggles.

But perhaps some reflections on their experiences and ours, and tensions between them, might lead us to clarify our call to follow Jesus today.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.