Keep the Oak in Sight

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62 ESV). Not long ago, I read the story of multimillionaire Don Storms. Several years ago he was a very successful television personality who was fired when new management came into his organization. He went through an agonizing period of depression and an "I just don't care anymore" attitude. But he was able to turn himself around and become incredibly successful in an entirely new field. How did he do it? "It was a sense of purpose," he says. "Having a goal and a new dream to strive toward." It was having this goal, making a success of his new business venture that enabled Storms to turn his life around. In the article he tells the secret to his success. He wrote that he was successful “because he kept his eye on the oak tree.” He went on to explain. "When I was growing up in the country," Storm said, "we used to plow the fields. We would never look down at the ground we were plowing. We'd look at the oak tree, shoot for that and plow a straighter furrow. If you look at the adversities, oh, there's a rock, or a tree stump, or a small ravine, you'll be wandering all over the place. But if you've got an oak tree in your sight and your heading right for it, you'll get past the rocks and stumps and accomplish you goal." That’s the principle behind Jesus’ teachings on discipleship in our Scripture this morning. When you want to get to the other side of anything, you must have a clear goal in sight. If your goal is fuzzy and you're not sure where you want to go, you'll bump into every stone and stump in your path. If, however, you have that goal in front of you, firmly planted in your mind, it will act like a magnet and draw you straight to it. What are your life goals today? What do you have your eyes set on in your life? William Barclay writes, “It's possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one's weight. Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, ‘So and so tells me that he was one of your students.’ The teacher answered devastatingly, ‘He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students.’ There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student. It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in the Church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.” Put your eye on the oak tree today!