"Follow Me."

Luke 5: 27-32

Jesus Calls Levi and Eats With Sinners

²⁷ After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, ²⁸ and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

²⁹ Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

³¹ Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ³² I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

What was going on within Levi that made him respond so quickly to the command, "Follow me" ? There must have been some inner discontent with his life that made the invitation to change so enticing that he left his tax booth immediately and became a disciple, one revered and to whom we owe one of the four gospels.  

Am I hearing the same kind of call during Lent?  What do I need to leave behind to follow Jesus more closely? Have I been faithful to my Lenten goals so far?  Is there anything interfering with them or causing me to neglect them?  We're only four days into the forty; it's too early to be slacking off.  What is Jesus asking of me today? Asking Matthew for advice might help.   Verse 32 puts things in proper perspective.

Bro. Rene