Sermon Cloud

If you're visiting us this morning, we'd like to welcome you. We're excited you've decided to join us this morning. Since the beginning of the year, we've been in a series called The Big Picture. God has been an active participant throughout history. He was intimately involved in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. And all throughout the Old Testament, we find God showing up time and time again, living and active in the history that was unfolding. And God's activity didn't end with the close of the Old Testament. In fact, it was just beginning. At the birth of Jesus Christ, God wrapped Himself in skin and became a man, while at the same time maintaining iHisHis divine nature. Over the course of human history up to that point, God was an active participant - but sometimes that wasn't visible or noticeable. Not anymore. Not since God stepped out of heaven and walked amongst us nearly 2,000 years ago. With the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, we have a physical reminder that God was living and active in the unfolding of human history. And when Jesus willingly gave up his own life on the cross for your sins and my sins and the sins of the entire world, all of history was shaken at its foundation. After Jesus rose again from the grave and ascended into heaven, it could be easy to assume that God's activity in the affairs of humanity would have somehow diminished. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Over the past 2,000 years, God has continued to be active in the world as time continues to progress. God has a big picture of what He intends to accomplish in His creation. And just like what is testified in the Scriptures, God chooses to use ordinary people to accomplish His purpose. And He continues to do so today. He wants people willing to follow Him where He leads and to do what He has called them to do. And we want to be some of those people at Cowan Christian Church. God has called us to be salt - to serve as a preservative, pushing away the decay that continues to invade the human race; and light - shining the light of the life-changing message of Jesus Christ to a world that has been darkened by sin. But in order to be effective salt and light, we have to know what God has planned and what He wants to accomplish, we need to discover His plan and allow Him to prepare us to be the salt and light that He wants us to be. We need to continue to put ourselves in the path of where God is moving and allow Him to shape our beings. And that takes discipline. It takes discipline to regularly meditate on the Scriptures and to allow the Scriptures to infiltrate every part of your being. It takes discipline to make the words that God has given us a regular part of your life. But it's one of the tools that God has given us to help us take the little picture of God's greatness and God's design that we have and to stretch the frame so we can have a greater understanding of Who God is and what He is working towards accomplishing. The same is true with the Discipline of prayer. Although we'd like to say that praying comes natural to all of us, sometimes having a conversation with God takes work. But as we practice the Discipline of talking with and listening to the Father, that small picture frame begins to stretch even more. And although we won't ever have a complete grasp of all of the majesty and beauty that is our Father in Heaven, practicing the Disciplines of Bible study, meditating on Scripture, and prayer can help us have a deeper understanding of His nature and have a better grasp of God's plan right here in Cowan, Indiana in 2008.

But practicing these Disciplines are not the end unto themselves. In themselves, they have no value whatsoever. They have value only as a means of placing us before God so that He can shape us and change us and give us the freedom to be the people He has designed us to be. Becoming more like Jesus is the purpose; the Disciplines are merely the means. There are far too many times where spirituality is measured by how much of the Bible you can recite or how flowery your prayers are in public. And these practices that are intended to be tools that allow God to shape us become the center of our lives. These Disciplines are not the center of our lives. Jesus Christ is the center of our lives. These Disciplines are not the answer; but they lead us to the Answer, who is Jesus Christ.

And so as we continue to use these Disciplines in their proper perspective: as tools for us to open the door of our lives and allow God to work on us; to use His hands and shape us into His own image, there is a key element to the Big Picture that we cannot forget. When Jesus shared what it means to be part of His kingdom he doesn't say "If anyone would come after me, he must meditate on the Scriptures daily, pray 6 times a day, and read 45 verses of Scripture every morning." No, the way you become a Disciple is found in Mark 8:34. Turn there, if you please. If you don't have your Bible with you, you're welcome to use the one found in the pew in front of you. Mark 8:34 is found on page 876. Mark is the shortest of the first-hand accounts of Jesus' ministry that we refer to as the Gospels. It's fast-paced, with the word ‘immediately' used many times throughout the Gospel. Jesus immediately did this and after that was accomplished; he was immediately doing something else. You almost get the idea that Jesus knew he had a limited amount of time to accomplish his mission, so he wasted little time before he was ‘immediately' off doing something else. As we come to today's passage, Jesus has been performing miracles, including the feeding of a crowd 4,000 men, not counting the women and children in the crowd who were also fed; and healing the sick and the blind. He's also been preaching against the practices of the religious elite, whose lives were more about performance of the Disciplines we discussed earlier and not about allowing God to shape them and change them. Things are going well for Jesus. He's got a large following of people and Peter, a member of his ‘inner circle,' has just confessed that Jesus is, in fact, the Christ - the promised One sent to be our deliverer. And all of a sudden, Jesus starts talking about his upcoming death, saying that he's going to be rejected and killed. Of course, Peter doesn't want to hear that kind of talk and so he pulls Jesus aside and tells him that such talk is nonsense. Then Jesus gives this in response to Peter's reaction: Read 8:34-38.

What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ? It's not the amount of prayers we say or the amount of Bible we read. Like I said before, those are important elements to allowing us to know God more and to allow Him to shape us, but they're not what it means to follow Jesus. Being a Christian, a follower of Christ, means living a cross-life. Living a cross-life means that your life is not your own. It means you're willing to give up your own life in order to follow Christ. In a place like the United States, that normally doesn't mean that we are all going to be called to literally die a physical death for following Jesus. But that's always a possibility. And although people say this is the age of tolerance, millions of Christians face persecution every day - merely for choosing to follow Christ daily. I mentioned a few weeks ago that a longtime friend of mine recently had the opportunity to travel to China and visit some of the house churches in that country. He came back saying that he'd expected to find a weak, downtrodden, and beaten group of believers, with many teetering on the edge of losing their faith. He was surprised to find the exact opposite. Although the Chinese government is attempting to stamp out the ‘unregistered' house churches, the faith of the members of the Chinese churches is remarkably strong and full of power, similar to the description of the early church in the book of Acts. And like in the book of Acts, many are being added to their number daily, even though merely confessing Christ can lead you to a ‘re-education' camp, and sometimes even death. But they have chosen to live the cross-life: to deny themselves and willingly submit to Jesus' leading - wherever that my lead...including death.

I received an email a few days about a pastor who was killed in Pakistan. Pastor Sajid William was 29 years old, married and had an 18-month-old daughter. On January 17, he was turning a sharp corner in his car when he saw gunmen aiming at him. Although he tried to speed away, he was shot in the back. He was murdered "simply for being a passionate follower of Jesus Christ." He knew Pakistan is a violent place where publicly proclaiming can result in death. He knew the risks and chose to follow Christ as salt and light in a region that is dying without the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Even though he knew it could mean his life, Sajid William chose to live the cross-life.

Even though our lives might not be threatened, we are invited to live the cross-life as well. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to lay down our own rights, dreams, passions, and motivations. In short, we need to abandon everything that we hope for and desire and hand them over to God. It doesn't matter what your position is in life. You could be the owner of a multi-million dollar company, or you could be the janitor in that same company. In his book, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster says it this way: "We are commanded to live a life of submission because Jesus lived a life of submission, not because we are in a particular place or station in life. Self-denial is a posture fitting for all those who follow the crucified Lord." (p 117). As we continue to seek out God's plan, we need to be willing to lay down our own plans, hopes, dreams, and desires and submit them to His plans, hopes, dreams, and desires. That is living the cross-life. It could be something as simple as beginning a friendship with a co-worker, or becoming more generous with your possessions. Or it could be something more involved, like going back to school, going on a short-term missions trip, or even joining a missions effort overseas. I don't know what God has called you to do. That's between you and God. I do know that we can't be fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ without choosing to live the cross-life, a life that is surrendered to God's.

And that's not always easy. I get that. And so does God. If you still have your Bibles open, flip a few books over to Romans 12. In his discussion with the church in Rome about what it means to be a follower of Christ, Paul offers this as an example of how we should live: Read 12:1-2.

See, it's by offering our lives as sacrifices, by regularly surrendering ourselves before the throne that we're able to discover what God's will even is. The rest of the Disciplines help us in this respect, but it all comes down to how you're going to receive it. Are you going to surrender to what you know God is calling you to be and to do, or are you going to just go through the motions? It's your choice, but the invitation Jesus gave earlier isn't to merely go through the motions and follow him. It's to deny yourself - to surrender and live the cross-life - and follow him.

The interesting thing about the words Paul uses here is the word ‘living' sacrifice. The problem with offering a sacrifice that is still alive is that it always wants to climb down from the altar. And isn't that the way it is with following Jesus many times? We see the plans we had originally set out to accomplish and sometimes discover that those don't line up with what God has planned. So we daily have to make a decision whether to follow God's plans or our own. Are we going to climb up on that altar and willingly lay down our lives for the sake of Christ each day, or are we going to choose to do what we want and get up from that altar. It's a daily decision to surrender to God's will. But we can't accomplish the Big Picture of being salt and light in a world that needs to know Jesus without choosing to be that sacrifice every day.

The early church knew of this temptation to climb down from the altar. Some of the earliest works of Christian art show believers in a particular position of prayer. Their arms are outstretched, palms are facing out, and their faces are pointing upward. This position, known as the ‘orant' position, was used quite often in early church worship services. It was a physical reminder to each other that their lives are not their own, and that they need to openly allow God to use them in whatever capacity He desired. So, opening your arms like this was a way of physically saying, "Yes, Lord. I surrender to You. Make Your will my own will. Whatever You desire of me, I will do." It was a physical way to remind each other that they are living the cross-life.

We have the same choice today. We can choose to wake up each morning with our arms open and face pointed upward, saying, "Yes, Lord. Whatever You call me to do, I'll do it." Or, we can draw those arms inward, trying to grab on to our own possessions, passions, and plans, and essentially say, "Not today, God. I'm going to be in control of my own life today." And in the process, climb down off the altar and choose not to live the cross-life. It's a daily decision to make, and sometimes it's not very easy. But the call to follow Jesus is the call to deny yourself and live the cross-life.

So are you living the cross-life? Have you surrendered your life to His leading? If you have not ever done that - if you haven't begun to pursue an intimate relationship with God, He is inviting you to do that today. He is radically in love with you and went to the ends of the earth so you could become a friend of His - because that's how much He loves you and that's how much He loves me. He has given us a way to become His friends. And it begins by surrendering your life to Him. If you've never made that decision to surrender, to open up your arms and say, "Here I am, Lord," then there's no better day to begin doing that than today. He's there and waiting. All He wants from you is to turn to Him.

Or maybe you're like me and there are days where you know God is calling you to something and is preparing you for something, but there are days where you just want to hold on to everything you have, draw your arms in and say, "Not today, God. I'm going to run my own life today." And you climb down off the altar. We have been invited, too. We're invited to open ourselves to His guidance and allow Him to change us. We're invited to climb back on the altar on a daily basis and surrender everything about us and everything we have. It's a daily decision that each one of us has to make, but we are all continually invited to live the cross-life. And the best way to live the cross-life is by beginning today and begin anew each and every morning. The cross-life is difficult. It could cost you your life. But in the end, you'll find that it ultimately leads to an abundant life.