What does it mean to Follow?

Who do you follow? We ask that question of social media (from Instagram to TikTok to LinkedIn), influencers, celebrities, athletes, journalists, authors, artists, musicians, and podcasters. Some folks we follow are people we look up to, respect, admire, and perhaps want to emulate. Others we follow we simply find interesting, captivating, or exceptional—we might not necessarily want to be like them, but we revere who they are or what they have accomplished.

Jesus is someone we might find ourselves wanting to both emulate and revere. And yet, sometimes the spirit is willing yet the flesh is weak. Our best intentions to follow Jesus sometimes take us as far as becoming casual observers or fairweather fans. Yet, what we don’t recognize initially is this: when we don’t follow Jesus or cease following him, we most certainly begin following somebody else, or at least something else. As Bob Dylan said, “You gotta serve somebody.” He might as well have said: “You gotta follow somebody.”

John Mark Comer, in his book, Practicing the Way, the book from which we built this Lenten Series (Thank you, John Mark!), describes being a follower as being a disciple. He puts it like this: “The question isn’t, Am I a disciple? It’s, Who or what am I a disciple of?”