DISCIPLESHIP?
Recently, during my devotions, the Lord led me to a verse that I had read many times before, and thought I understood well. This time, though, the Lord let me see something rather surprising about His intention for us as believers, and the seriousness of the call that He has placed on us as Christians. The scripture is in St. Matthew 14, right after the account of the miraculous feeding of the 5,000. It reads, “And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before Him unto the other side, while He sent the multitudes away.” (Matthew 14:22). There are two tasks that the Lord is directing in this verse: He is sending His disciples across the sea ahead of Him, and He is dismissing, or sending away, the multitude. The Lord seems very deliberate in accomplishing these two tasks; and, so He was, for He did nothing that was not intentional. Everything had plan and purpose. We see in His actions, therefore, a clear separating of two groups of people: