The man who was healed from possession by the Legion of devils naturally wanted to stay with Jesus, but Jesus refused his request and instead gave him another mission, telling him to go home and proclaim what the Lord had done for him. The man responded by spontaneously extending the range of his mission from his family to include the broader area of the Ten Cities.

In the Gospels, several different people expressed a desire to follow Jesus as His disciple. Jesus did not accept their offer, sometimes refusing it and sometimes challenging the speaker. On other occasions, Jesus directly calls people to follow Him. On yet other occasions, people bring their friends to Jesus, and Jesus accepts them as followers. All these details suggest that vocation is not simply the fruit of human desire. In a straightforward narrative way, the stories indicate a kind of tension between human proposals and the divine initiative of grace. When a man offers to follow Jesus, it may well be a merely human desire, perhaps one that is not even well thought out. When Jesus calls, however, the ideal response is immediate and unconditional.