Jun 29, 2022
Do you find yourself in a position of wondering about the cost of following Jesus? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One podcast. We've been talking for a couple of episodes about following Jesus and where the places in scripture where He said follow me. Today I wanna read Matthew 16:24, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." We actually talked about this passage, this similar phrase, this statement of Jesus from Luke back in Episode 104. If you want to check out that episode, it was several years ago now.
But look at this passage, "Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." There are three conditions here: denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. In the verse in Luke, it actually says "take up your cross daily."
Following Jesus has a price. Jesus makes this statement in Matthew 16, right after He told Peter to get behind Him, satan, you are a stumbling block to me. He's explaining to the disciples that He's going to die. He's explaining to them the cost of doing what God wants. Hanging onto our lives and our desires and the things that we think put us at odds with God. God's model is exactly opposite ours. Our natural faith, our natural beliefs, our natural way of living is all 180 degrees at odds with God. Over time, we can train ourselves a little bit to think like God and to do what He would have us do.
But it's so different, and it's so foreign that Jesus makes this point: we must deny ourselves, we must take up our cross, and then we follow Him. I want to listen to Jesus and obey Him and do what He says. Oftentimes that calls me to a place where I'm not comfortable. And I don't understand what's going to happen next. All my little plans and all my ideas of the way things are going to work just don't fit.
Jesus has a different strategy for us and it all exists on the other side of us following Him. That's the idea. We follow Jesus. We don't get to make this up for ourselves. Our guesses, and our tendencies, and our beliefs don't naturally bring us to the place where we're following Jesus, where we're part of His strategy, and we're part of His plan. Our natural lives and our natural personalities take us totally out of the realm of where He gets to control and He's being glorified and where His plan is being executed. And that's why we have to remind ourselves regularly to follow Him.
Today, I want to challenge us as Marketplace Christians. If we wish to come after Him, we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. The command to take up our cross, that's a command to die. Denying ourselves means we stop focusing on what we want and instead try and focus on what Jesus wants. This three-step plan: deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him means that we turn from our own desire, we realize that our own desires aren't ever coming back, and then we follow Him.
Following Jesus is very expensive and yet it's the most rewarding thing that we can ever do. I hope that you follow Jesus. I'm grateful that you listen to this podcast and you are a Marketplace Minister. I'm grateful that you serve other people on a daily basis so that Jesus might become visible. That's the definition of a Marketplace Minister. Often we use the term that we're just helping other people move one notch closer to Jesus. And if you're doing that today, you're a Marketplace Minister. Thanks for joining us. You might even check out a group of us who are trying to do this on a daily basis. We connect through our online community at https://community.Followerofone.org.
Thanks very much.