THE HARD THING

I did a series of messages one time a number of years ago based on these words of Jesus - “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

I suspect that there have been as many devotional thoughts and challenges based on those words as probably any in the Scriptures. And deservedly so, for they are weighty words that we need to understand and come to terms with. The thoughts I offered then, and now, are not definitive and certainly not in any way exhaustive.

But they represent an insight that I have personally found helpful so I offer them now to you. What is it that the cross represents in your life and mine? I believe it simply stands for the hard thing, or more specifically, any hard thing that stands between us and the will of God for our lives at any point along the way.

Notice that in Luke’s telling of the account of Jesus’ statement he accentuates the practical nature of the instruction by including the word ‘daily’. This is not something that we may be called on to do someday for Jesus. This is to be an ongoing experience of living for Him.

I really don’t like doing the hard things. As a pastor, a lot of the things I need to do can be pretty mundane. Then, thankfully, there are the things that I get to do that I just really enjoy doing. I naturally gravitate toward those. But then there are those other things; those hard things; the things that cause me anguish and which in my flesh I try and avoid doing. They are the things that cause me to have a sick anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. But the truth is, those things sometimes (dare I say often?) lie in the path of God’s will for my life too.

What kind of things am I talking about? Well, for me, some of those things would be things like … confronting people or disappointing people, saying ‘no’... saying things that people don’t want to hear… admitting my mistakes and sins… confessing and saying I’m sorry… taking a stand for the side of truth when you’re seriously outnumbered in a public situation… sometimes just being honest with myself and owning my own contribution to a problem can be a very hard thing. Anyway, those are the kinds of things I’m talking about.

I wish they were not part of my calling. I wish we could just do the fun stuff; the easy stuff.

Jesus spoke of His Cross as that for which He came into the world. It was the Father’s plan and destiny for Him. And as such, He pressed forward into it sweating as it were great drops of blood. You and I are also called by God to walk a certain path and He has a certain destiny for each of us as well. And all of us have those hard things in the path. If we are going to follow Him then we must not try and skirt them. We must be willing to move forward into them and through them and do those hard things that lie before us. If we try and forgo them then we will find ourselves out of His will and missing out on the results that God wants to accomplish through our willingness to obey Him in the hard things. And the results are there, believe me. In fact, the results of doing the hard but necessary things in life tend to far outweigh any benefits from doing the things that come easy. But much (I hope not most) of the time we choose the path of least resistance and neither we, nor the world, are better off for it.

I don’t know what some of those things are that you are facing. You need to pray that one through as a believer. But be honest with yourself. Maybe you don’t even need to pray about it because you know. You’ve known for a while now, long enough that you’ve gotten really good at making excuses for yourself. So what do you do.

There is really only one thing you can do. Do the hard thing. Face it head on. Take courage and know that He is with you. He has done the hard thing; the hardest of things. He has led the way before you and is calling you now to walk in it. He will meet you there. That’s His promise to all who will share in His sufferings.

Think about this. If you are not seeing the kind of results in your life that you know you should be seeing, then try asking yourself this question – what necessary painful thing am I avoiding. And learn to ask it often. There is a promised land that God has waiting for you. But you must be willing to take it.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you where ever you go.”

ONE WRONG TURN

George lived 68 years. How much he must have learned over the course of all of those minutes and miles! Just think of it! 68 New Year’s celebrations to ponder over the events of the previous year, more than 3,500 Sunday afternoons to wonder about life, almost 600,000 hours and millions and millions of moments.

George was a farmer. How many things do you learn when you live the life of a farmer? He was well known in the community in which he lived. That’s a lot of living. He owned and ran a local butcher shop. I wonder if he ever cut himself? And he was a volunteer fire fighter. He would have known all about so many of the things that are dangerous in this world. He had a whole lifetime of learning.

But one day George made a mistake. He was riding his tractor in the merge lane and suddenly made a sharp left turn. He didn’t do a shoulder check before he cranked the wheel in that fateful moment of time and so he didn’t see the 18 wheeler behind him heading for the power plant at Point Aconi.

A whole lifetime of learning ended with one simple wrong choice in a moment’s time. George MacNeil from Big Bras d’Or was killed instantly and was pronounced dead at the scene on Friday the 19th of June, 2009 on highway 162 on Cape Breton Island. In the words of one reporter, “He didn’t have a chance.” Maybe he didn’t, but he did have a choice.

When I think back over my 50 years of living and all I have learned... I have distant but vivid memories (that serve me well) of pain from putting my fingers in places they shouldn’t have been, taking chances I shouldn’t have taken, making decisions that I would never make again. I have the benefit of all of that experience.

And I wonder. How is it that a person can live all those years and learn all that he would have learned and make as many decisions as he would have made and then, in a moment of time, make one simple, seemingly little, mistake and it’s all over! It hardly seems fair does it? But that is life, sometimes at least, just totally unforgiving.

And what about me? I still make my share of mistakes. And what about you?

It does point to one profound truth though. Life is often determined by the choices we make, sometimes in little gradual ways and sometimes in big sudden ways. But either way, God has, in His sovereign will, chosen to give us the power of choice. It is both an incredible gift of nobility and a terrifying prospect at the same time. What choices will you and I make today? Choose well my friend. Seek Him.

TOP 10: Pet Peeves

What really bugs me? Here they are:

10. People who don’t drive like me

9. People who do drive like me

8. Fussy people

7. Cat hair

6. Tags on the inside of collars that irritate my neck

5. People who move stuff so I can’t find it, that is until I trip over it or run into it!

4. People that stand back and criticize the work of others while refusing to take on any real responsibility themselves

3. People who refuse to grow up

2. People who try to make their personal agenda the purpose of Jesus’ church

1. People who are always talking about what bothers them!

How about you? Why not let me know what really bugs you. You can send me your top ten or you can just send me even one!

DIFFERENT HOW?

If you read my post from last week you will know that there is more I would like to say about the ‘permission to struggle’.

When we don’t feel we have it, not only does it alienate us from each other, the result of which is we struggle alone (the subject of last weeks post), but it also alienates us from those who don’t know Christ. And the result of this is lost opportunity for people to come to know Him.

I know there is no shortage of people who believe that Christians are all a bunch of hypocrites. But there are also people who are not Christians but wish they could be but know in their hearts that they could never do it (‘it’ being the stuff that Christians are supposed to do). This relates back to the ‘perception’ that we create (if we aren’t careful) that we are really doing it (‘doing it’ meaning we don’t struggle).

The truth of the matter is that real Christians struggle with anger, impatience, lust, greed, self-centredness, addiction, resentment (need I go on?) ... just like everyone else. Sometimes we mistakenly feel that admitting this is somehow a blow to Christianity. After all, Christians are supposed to be different, right?!

Well, this is definitely where the rub comes isn’t it. We are supposed to be different. It is pretty hard to get away from that truth when we have Jesus saying things like … “People (are like this or do things like this)… but it should not be so with you…”

Yes, we are to be different, but just what is that difference and how does it work?

There is definitely change (difference) that comes when we come to that initial acceptance of Christ. It is a major shift in our allegiance, if you will, when we entrust ourselves to Him. The Bible also makes it clear that this simple act of faith on our part is met with absolute forgiveness on God’s part, who, consequently comes personally to live in us from that time forward. We have God in us! It has to be one of the greatest understatements to say this constitutes a substantive difference!

However, in order to really understand what this means we have to understand what God is like. He doesn’t come to ‘take over’ and then control us or manipulate us into holiness. He doesn’t ‘operate’ us like you would a machine. Because He isn’t like that and it’s not what He is all about. He comes so that we can have a relationship with Him; so that we can know Him and experience the wonders of life as He created it to be in relationship with Him.

This all points to a process and this point is a very important one. We change over time (becoming different from what we were) as we learn to trust Him and learn His ways on a very experiential level. It’s all relational and it’s all personal. And yes, this involves struggle. Paul put it this way, “Work out your salvation … for it is God who works in you…”

There are probably a number of different directions that we could go in as we contemplate these things but here is what I want to say to you today. If you are a Christian (that is to say, if you have placed your trust in Christ to receive forgiveness and eternal life), then, yes, we are different in that we trust Christ to save us and His presence in our lives is the most wonderful thing in the world. BUT, we have no difficulty relating to those who struggle with every temptation common to man. Your struggle is a vital part of your story that you have to share with the world. It’s hard.

If you are not a Christian but would like to be, what you need to understand is that becoming a Christian is entering a relationship. It is not primarily about what we do or don’t do. Those things are more consequential. It is about knowing Christ and learning to trust Him and to live for Him. That isn’t something that all happens at once in a moment of time. It is something that is worked out over a lifetime. It’s hard, but it’s the only battle worth fighting.

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.” Philippians 3:10-16