His power is truly extraordinary. It affects everything. In His words, in His actions, and most of all, in His influence on other people. He has only to say to Simon and Andrew, the fishermen, "Follow me!" And straightway they leave their nets and follow him, v. 18. It is enough to call the brothers of Zebedee, James and John, who are engaged in mending the nets, and they, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the laborers, follow him, v. 20. The charm of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spiritual power that irresistibly draws the hearts of pure and honest people to Him, is enormous.

We do not raise the question here what is the secret of this power. Precious to us is another observation of the Savior in the Gospel of John, where He promises His followers that each of them can acquire this spiritual power. "He that believeth on me," He says, "the works which I do, he shall do also, and greater than these" (Jn. XIV, 12).

What a great promise!

To have the power that Christ had! A power that demons cannot withstand and fear! To fight them and win, cleansing your life and your soul from their poisonous, pernicious influence, which constantly darkens the path to perfection! Moreover: to attract other people to the Lord Jesus Christ, to make others participants in eternal bliss! Isn't this a great joy and happiness?

But how to acquire this power?

Strictly speaking, the entire teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is the answer to this question. The Gospel in successive narrations reveals to us the long and difficult path that a believer must go through in order to fulfill the covenant of Christ: "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. V, 48).

The great spiritual strength that the Lord promises to His faithful disciples is acquired only at the end of that path, at the highest levels of perfection. But the first step, the first step that a person must take for this to happen, is quite definitely marked by the words of this passage: repent and believe in the gospel (Mk. I, 15).

This is how the Savior's preaching begins. His great Forerunner preached about the same thing. With this, every person who has entrusted himself to the guidance of the Lord Jesus Christ should begin.

As a first step and as a prerequisite for the possibility of perfection, two efforts of will are required: 1) repent! and (2) believe in the gospel!

We know that repentance in the deep sense of the word is not a simple contrition for sins or disgust for one's sinful past, it still less means formal confession: the meaning of the word is much deeper. This is a decisive transfer of life to a new track, a complete rearrangement of all values in the soul and heart, where, under normal conditions, worldly concerns and goals of temporary, mainly material life are in the first place, and everything high and holy, everything connected with faith in God and service to Him, is pushed into the background. Man does not completely abandon these high ideals, but remembers them and serves them furtively, timidly, in rare moments of spiritual enlightenment. Repentance presupposes a radical rearrangement: God is in the foreground always, everywhere, in everything; Behind, after all, is the world and its demands, unless they can be completely banished from the heart. In other words, repentance requires the creation of a new, unified center in man, and this center, where all the threads of life converge, must be God.

When a person is able to fuse all his thoughts, feelings, and decisions with this single center, then from this will be created that wholeness, monolithic soul, which gives tremendous spiritual strength. In addition, a person with such a disposition seeks the fulfillment of only the will of God and in the end can achieve complete subordination or merging of his weak human will with the omnipotent will of the Creator, and then his power grows to the divine power of miracles, for then it is not he who acts, but God acts in him.

This, in general terms, is the process of the development of spiritual power in man.

Why could the apostles receive this power of miracles and the charm of personality and preaching, which made them powerful and skilful fishers of men (Mk. I, 17)? Precisely because God was the single, all-encompassing center for them, and they fulfilled His will as the highest law of life. It is interesting to think about the history of their calling. One word of the Lord, one call: Follow me! - and everything is forgotten and abandoned: the boat, the nets, all the meager equipment of the fishing trade, even the father... It is clear that for these people God was dearer than anything in life, and when His will sounded like a call, nothing could stop them. Whoever knows how to respond so readily to God's call will go far; and whoever is able to surrender to the will of God so completely, so wholeheartedly, without doubt or hesitation, will undoubtedly receive great gifts and great spiritual strength from the Lord.

It must be confessed that at the present time there are very few such whole people, full of deep faith and spiritual strength. When you look back at your life and at the life of modern society, you see with sadness that it is not faith that moves us and God is not the center for us. We have replaced this great life-giving center with others.