Crowds. Today they’re following you and tomorrow they’re gone. Off to follow the next person that has something they like, something they want.

Crowds. They have an effect on the world. They can bring down governments, decide what’s in and what’s out. Who’s in. Who’s out. Things shift like sand at the whims of the crowds. They are simultaneously feared and desired by the world.

Crowds. They are dangerous to Christ followers. They gather now in cyberspace and it’s game on to see who can have the biggest crowd around their Instagrammed Facebooked Twittered and Snap Chatty life.

Some are counting in the negatives. How many invites they didn’t receive. How many times their phone never rang. How many people didn’t talk to them at church. For far too many of us, numbers matter. We are searching for identity in the numbers. Looking for the crowd. Lamenting the lack of one.

Jesus never looked for the crowds. They found Him. They didn’t move Him, except to compassion. He did not seek their approval or their allegiance. He came to serve, not to please.

Jesus didn’t count the crowds, He withdrew from them. Often. To be alone with His Father.  Perhaps to get strengthened? To get perspective? To just rest.

Because He was here for the crowds. They were not here for Him. 

The crowds did not fill any space in Jesus, they didn’t complete Him in any way, they didn’t cause Him to feel wanted, needed, or good about Himself.

Jesus was complete in God and He knew it.

I feel the pull, don’t you? The draw of the crowd, of counting followers and likes and invitations and such. Even though I know they are fickle and prone to shout accolades one day and indictments the next.

Even though I know that crowds are never there for the person they are crowding. Crowds are always in it for themselves. They crowded around Jesus because they needed something from Him, wanted what He had to give them.

{That’s the difference between those who follow Jesus and those who crowd around Him.}

Let’s pull away. Today, let’s withdraw from the crowding in our life and just be with the One. Realign with the fact that while we may be here for the crowd, they are not here for us. We are royal servants, not crowd pleasers.

Let’s withdraw from crowds today so that our hearts can remember that we are the followers, not the followed.