Labels: Follower.

"Be a leader, not a follower." You've heard this. Everyone has heard this before. This statement could not be any further from the truth. Life promotes it, rise to the top, there are always higher roles to achieve. Christianity contradicts it. Life requires you to keep climbing ladders, Christ requires you to live bent low.
I have been going through the book "Experiencing God" by Blackaby. This book focuses on watching where God is working and joining Him wherever that area may be. This book causes me to think of one person in particular, in my life, that emulates each chapter's theme.
Some could call him a missionary, preacher, pastor, English teacher, santa claus, country singer, mechanic, son, husband.
I call him dad.
Regardless of the role he takes on to different individuals, the labels will fade. They will not stand the test of time.
However, God knows him as a follower of Christ, and this label will lead him into eternity.
One sunday afternoon my father was driving a little boy home from church and the little boy asked him a question : "Pastor Phil, what is your job exactly?"
He may fill the pulpitt on sunday mornings, but what is his job?
To be a follower of Christ, in whatever form this may be.
To the refugees that do not speak english, he is the english teacher.
To children that do not get gifts for Christmas, he is santa claus.
To his wife and daughters who know nothing about cars, he is the mechanic, or the one who pays for the mechanic.
To the Police Station, he is the chaplain.
Watching where God is at work and joining him. My father is the purest example of this. Introvert is a word that could be used to describe his personality. I would describe him as a sponge, he sits back, watches, listens, learns, and then he joins. He never preached to us as children, he led by example. We watched him join God daily.
When called to be a missionary, he was willing to be a herdsmen in Albania all in order to join God. He was willing to take his family to Russia right after the Berlin wall had fallen. Dangerous? Yes. But there is no cost, to my dad, when it comes to joining Christ.
My whole life I have had a front row seat to what it looks like to be a follower of Christ.
Matthew 10:35 states "For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
This verse will never ring true in my life.
I am at the stage in my life where I am ready to go out and join God in whatever He has planned. This is not tearing me away from my father. This is what he has spent his whole life teaching me to be like.
A follower of Christ.