He saith unto them, Come ye after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. — Matt 4:19
We must be ready to break any ties which Christ bids us to break, in order to become one with Him. We must become His disciples before we can become workers.
The first thing always is personal attachment to Christ, the disengaging of ourselves from all other masters, and the devoting of ourselves altogether to Him.
When we have entered His company we receive from His hand a work to do. The world is like a deep, black sea, its black waters of sin being full of lost souls. The work of Christ and His followers is to draw these lost ones out of the dark floods and save them.
Sometimes the waters in which these lost ones lie are very foul, but we ought not to shrink from our work on this account. Christ Himself went down into the blackest waters of sin to find and save the lost. Once He drew out a “woman that was a sinner”; another time it was a publican; and again, it was a thief dying on a cross.