Video: I Will Make You Fishers of Men
Elder Wirthlin reminded us of the Savior's invitation in his address from April 2002 Conference entitled, Follow Me.
"Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to have lived in the days of the Savior? If you had been there, would you have heeded His call “Follow me”? Perhaps a more realistic question might be, “If the Savior were to call you today, would you be just as willing to leave your nets and follow Him?” I am confident that many would.
But for some, it may not be such an easy decision. Some have discovered that nets, by their very nature, are sometimes not so easy to leave...Nets are generally defined as devices for capturing something. In a more narrow but more important sense, we might define a net as anything that entices or prevents us from following the call of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God.
Nets in this context can be our work, our hobbies, our pleasures, and, above all else, our temptations and sins. In short, a net can be anything that pulls us away from our relationship with our Heavenly Father or from His restored Church....
As Jesus the Christ stood on the shores of the Sea of Galilee 2,000 years ago, so stands He today, issuing the same call He gave to those faithful fishermen and now to all who will hear His voice: “Follow me!” We have nets that must be tended and nets that must be mended. But when the Master of ocean, earth, and sky calls to us, “Follow me,” we should leave the entangling, worldly nets behind and follow His footsteps."
And so we untangle ourselves from the nets that capture our attention and time, it is not merely enough to do it just once- the process must be continuous as Elder Holland reminded us as he recounted the exchange between Peter and Christ after the resurrection.
"Peter said for the third time, “Lord, … thou knowest that I love thee.” To which Jesus responded (and here again I acknowledge my non scriptural elaboration), perhaps saying something like: “Then Peter, why are you here? Why are we back on this same shore, by these same nets, having this same conversation? Wasn’t it obvious then and isn’t it obvious now that if I want fish, I can get fish? What I need, Peter, are disciples—and I need them forever. I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs. I need someone to preach my gospel and defend my faith. I need someone who loves me, truly, truly loves me, and loves what our Father in Heaven has commissioned me to do. Ours is not a feeble message. It is not a fleeting task. It is not hapless; it is not hopeless; it is not to be consigned to the ash heap of history. It is the work of Almighty God, and it is to change the world. So, Peter, for the second and presumably the last time, I am asking you to leave all this and to go teach and testify, labor and serve loyally until the day in which they will do to you exactly what they did to me.”
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