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.”