Coming After Christ (Part 3)

Following Jesus means to follow in His steps

What does it mean to follow Christ?

The Greek New Testament word used in Luke 9:23, akoloutheo (ak-ol-oo-theh’o) means, To be in the same way with, to accompany specifically as a disciple: --- to follow.

This infers to me that there is agreement by me to accept the discipleship of Christ; to be guided and mentored by Jesus Christ.

Sharon (Sharon Sharing God) recently wrote about hiking with her husband:

“Sometimes when we’ve been hiking for a long time I get really hot and tired, and sometimes I don’t think I can take another step. What do I do? I keep my husband in my sights ahead of me, and I just plod on after him.”¹

Following was never a strength I exhibited. Taking instruction was for me always difficult because I had my own opinions about what to do and how to do it. If you’ve read the previous two posts you’ll recognize a pattern of thought and behavior inconsistent with someone coming after Christ.

Topics on submission and discipleship were not that important to me as fundamental concepts to grasp. As a result, I continued to be mired in thoughts and behaviors which severely limited my appreciation for the goodness and grace of God. It also restricted my ability (and willingness) to face adversity, temptation and sin.

As I look back on my life, the Holy Spirit has helped me recognize that although my biological father deserted our family, I still managed to pick up an attitude and behavior he demonstrated although he never personally mentored me.

When my father left, he abdicated his responsibilities as a husband and father. It was as if he went to the moon because he had vanished. He never called, wrote or attempted to contact me or any of my brothers; were invisibly non-existent to him. What the Holy Spirit helped me realize is that when I didn’t agree with someone, or they gave me frustration, they became non-existent to me. I wasn’t even cognizant of this thinking and pattern of behavior but I can see how I often emotionally shutdown on people.

As I said, my relationship with Christ was no different than my relationship with anyone else; it was a conditional relationship. I’m thankful that I no longer have that kind of relationship but I’m saddened that I have damaged some really valuable relationships which I thought in my mind were perfectly OK.

Following Christ takes commitment, discipline, wisdom and sacrifice. I can say without reservation that I’ve had days where I’ve cried out to the Lord, “I have nowhere else to go, who is there like You that will listen to me?” I’ve also had days where words just couldn’t be uttered from my mouth and I found the only word in my vocabulary was, Jesus.

We all begin this journey the same way, we hear the message of the gospel and we make an expression of our faith by accepting Jesus Christ as our savior but at some point, the journey starts to get rough.

“…Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the rod, and the birds came and ate them up. And others fell upon rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil, and yielded a crop…”²

Being rooted is a term used in martial arts that indicates your base cannot be moved. Have you ever seen a plant grow in the most inauspicious place? Through a crack in a concrete sidewalk, in a junkyard; places one can’t imagine a plant surviving. And yet, there it grows! Despite all the obstacles, it remains rooted. To follow Christ, I must remain rooted.

To be rooted in Christ, I must be committed to Christ.

“If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up…”³

Most of us understand the concept of discipline and the phrase lack of discipline or undisciplined. I had to learn that I couldn’t follow Christ and lead an undisciplined life. I like to think of discipline as order that escapes chaos. My life before Christ was chaotic, undisciplined, and lacking focus. Accepting Christ didn’t suddenly cause these flaws to change. I discovered that it takes discipline. For me, it is the kind of discipline that flees a chaotic life much like a runaway slave. I needed order in my life and as a software engineer, I learned about order and structure. Without me even realizing it, God was giving me a pattern to follow Christ; the order and structure He could impart in my life.

To be disciplined in Christ, I must have order and structure.

Unlike knowledge, wisdom was difficult to acquire. I was intelligent, so acquiring knowledge was never a difficult task for me. But wisdom was far more elusive. For me, I have come to realize that wisdom isn’t the years of experience I’ve gain in an area; wisdom is the correct application of the knowledge I’ve acquired. It’s one thing to know the right thing to do, wisdom enables me to do the right thing correctly.

“Everything is permissible for me—allowable and lawful; but not all things are helpful—good for me to do, expedient and profitable when considered with other things. Everything is lawful for me, but I will not become the slave of anything or be brought under its power.”⁴

True wisdom comes from God and I had to learn that if I was ever going to be successful in following Christ, I needed something I sorely lacked; wisdom. Reading the bible enables me to acquire knowledge but no matter how many times I read scripture, I am conscious of my need for God to impart wisdom and understanding so that I will correctly apply the word of God in my life.

To apply spiritual wisdom in my life, I must seek wisdom and understanding from God.

How many times have you heard someone say, “Why does God require me to give something up?” Many people think that following Christ is painful. I guess if you’re being stoned as Stephen was, then yes that was painful. But when I considered my thoughts on things I have to give up for Christ, I realize that this was my own concept of the relationship; not God’s. I spoke earlier about how in the Old Testament, the sin offering was brought to the priest and the offerer would lay his hand on the head of the animal symbolizing a transfer taking place. All claims of ownership rights, vested interests were abdicated because the offerer acknowledged that the sacrifice belonged to God. I’ve learned in my life that things I’ve given up required a willingness on my part to transfer rights to God. So if I had a problem in my life, like shutting down emotionally with others, I came to realize that it was something which I was incapable of handling on my own. I reached a point where I offered it up to God, transferring ownership rights to Him.

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”⁵

Sacrificing the things I selfishly crave in order to maintain a relationship with Jesus Christ and others is a choice I freely make.

To sacrifice, I must freely give to God that which I value.

Christ says:
“…If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”⁶

Father God,

Following Christ has not always been easy for me to do, but the fault was with me. I humbly declare my desire to follow Jesus all the days of my life. I'm committed to discipleship. I seek Your wisdom and understanding in things pertaining to my life. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me apply Your word in my life each day. The things I once treasured and valued are now an offering to You. I ask You to help me see what else needs to be offered up that I may follow Your Son without being choked by the cares of this life. Amen.

Footnotes:

1. In His Footsteps, by Sharon Kirby, on the Blog Faith’s Firm Foundation, August 16, 2010
2. Matthew 13:3-8, NASB
3. John 15:6, NASB
4. 1 Corinthians 6:12, Amplified Bible
5. John 15:13, NASB
6. Luke 9:23, NASB

References:

1. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, By James B. Strong, S.T.D, LL.D., Riverside Book and Bible House, Iowa Falls, Iowa 50126
2. The Layman's Parallel New Testament, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan
3. The Ryrie Study Bible (New American Standard Version), Edited by Charles C. Ryrie, Moody Publishers, Chicago, Illinois, ISBN 0-8024-8920-6
4. Matthew Henry's Commentary, McDonald Publishing Company, McLean, Virginia 22101, ISBN 0-917006-21-6
5. Sharon Sharing God, blog by Sharon Kirby

Coming After Christ (Part 2)

Take up your cross daily

One of the most difficult things for me to do was to take up my cross daily; I was always looking for my own personal Simon of Cyrene. Those who know me easily recognize that I don’t care for manual labor. As a young boy I had a summer job picking up trash in the neighborhood. It was hot and tiring work and it was that summer that I decided I would do anything other than manual labor. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to work in the IT profession.

When I think about these words of Christ, I realize that this involves a kind of death march of one’s self; understanding the march ends in crucifying my earthly ambitions. Hmmmmm…you can see how difficult it was for me to get to this place when I couldn’t even deny myself. The idea of someone else carrying my cross seemed perfectly acceptable, especially if they were willing to. I remember one of my younger brothers bought a car and in my mind I knew I now had wheels to go where I wanted. I remember times I would just grab his keys and leave. It never occurred to me that I needed to correct my behavior towards my brother.

My real problem here is that I was irresponsible and accepting Christ didn’t change that attitude initially; because I didn’t want to carry my cross. I look at carrying my cross daily as practicing personal responsibility. I once commented on another blog that discussed the need to trust God. In my comment I acknowledged the need to trust God but I found myself asking, Does God trust me? When God needs someone to demonstrate the power of His forgiveness, His immeasurable grace and love, His unsurpassing goodness, His righteousness and truth, and His holiness, will He call on me? Am I being responsible as a servant of God? Am I being accountable to God?

Carrying my cross daily is that aspect of me putting to death my selfish desires to gratify my own wants and replacing them with a genuine desire to offer myself up as a living sacrifice. The bible says,

“…present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”¹

Presenting myself as a living sacrifice becomes a form of worship offered to God. The understanding finally dawned on me that doing so is reasonable because worship requires sacrifice. This parallels what occurred in the Old Testament references to worship.

“…’When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd or flock…And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf.'”²

The sacrificial offerings of animals were consumed by fire. The fire that consumes me is the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, the offering was sacrificed by the priest but it was presented to the priest by the offerer for their sins. In doing this, the offerer gave up any claims, rights of ownership or vested interest in the offering (animal); it belonged to God. This was symbolized by placing their hand on the head of the animal to indicate a transfer of:

1. Ownership rights
2. Sin

Taking up my cross daily is a voluntary act on my part, not as an act of atonement such as what occurred in the Old Testament; Christ has once and for all atoned for me. Taking up my cross daily is the act of a free-will offering, a sacrifice of praise, and a sacrifice of thanksgiving unto God.

Each day as I choose once again to take up my cross, I recognize it is a conscious decision on my part to abstain from sin and be an instrument offered to God for whatever He purposes. I have in truth, given ownership rights, claims and all vested interests of my life to God; I am no longer my own.

This is for me, taking up my cross daily.

Footnotes:

1. Romans 12:1, KJ
2. Leviticus 1:2,4, NASB

References:

1. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, By James B. Strong, S.T.D, LL.D., Riverside Book and Bible House, Iowa Falls, Iowa 50126
2. The Layman's Parallel New Testament, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan
3. The Ryrie Study Bible (New American Standard Version), Edited by Charles C. Ryrie, Moody Publishers, Chicago, Illinois, ISBN 0-8024-8920-6
4. Matthew Henry's Commentary, McDonald Publishing Company, McLean, Virginia 22101, ISBN 0-917006-21-6

Coming After Christ

We need to hear from you We need a word from you If we don't hear from you What will we do Wanting you more each day Show us your perfect way There is no other way That we can live

I love the early morning just before the break of dawn. The house is quiet, the dawning sun has not yet appeared but I am ready to talk with God. More importantly, I’m discovering the importance of being silent as the Holy Spirit washes over my thoughts; allowing me to reflect on the mercies, goodness and graciousness of Almighty God. Often, I will find myself singing a song that comes to mind. It was during my Morning Prayer and meditation that the Holy Spirit brought this passage of scripture to mind:

“And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’”¹

As I thought about this, I found myself looking out the window into my back yard. I could see a butterfly hovering around a fruit tree. I then watched several birds land to the ground and eat their fill.

I then thought about a medical research story I read last year which reported that researchers at the Tokyo University of Science successfully created what they call a “tooth germ” containing genetic instructions and then subsequently implanted it inside the tooth socket of a mouse. One month later, a new tooth appeared above the gum line. After 11 weeks, the new tooth contained the same properties, shape hardness and response to pain and stress as a natural tooth; the tooth also was used for chewing by the mouse.

This got me to thinking about the long-term implications of merging science with technology. Medical Science is now using the term, “programming” which was formerly used exclusively by IT Technologists. The idea that germs or cells can be “genetically programmed” to follow a set of instructions (either one-time only or until a conditional interrupt occurs) is a radical leap from how most view science and medical research.

I suddenly got the thought that butterflies, birds, and even germs function based on their coding; it’s in their DNA so to speak. I then wondered why as a Christian I struggle in areas of my life while a bird never concerns itself with the next meal.

A bird follows the life of a bird.

A butterfly follows the life of a butterfly.

Germs and cells follow the life of germs and cells.

Who do I follow?

Christ says, “If anyone wishes to come after Me”, there are three steps to take:

1. Deny myself
2. Take up my cross daily
3. Follow Christ

I’ve discovered that the more things I have, the more difficult it is to deny myself. I derive a measure of pleasure from things. It’s strange when I think about it but I live a life of redundancy. Perhaps it’s because money was tight growing up with a working Mom and four brothers. If I have something, you can be pretty sure I have two. When I shop for groceries, I seem to always pick up two items; redundancy. Perhaps it’s as I said growing up with very little disposable income. Working in IT has only seemed to reinforce that pattern of thinking. If you are architecting a computer system, one of the issues to address is failure. If you have a redundant system, you protect yourself from failure by just switching to the redundant system if the primary fails.

Things get in the way of denying myself.

The problem with denying myself is that I love me. I love everything about me. I don’t mean there are aspects of my life that I prefer not to have, but I find it difficult to get upset with myself over anything I do. If I am disappointed, it is quickly forgotten and once again, I love me. It occurs to me that the love I have for myself is unconditional love; I don’t have to do anything to love me, I just do.

I used to believe that absolutely no one loves unconditionally. People only love me as long as they were getting something in return. When I look back at this belief system I valued, I realize I was actually defining my method of loving others. I hope you can see the flaw in this belief because it sets you up to be manipulative, deceptive or ultimately frustrated. I did things to get things; my relationships were predicated on what someone had of value that I wanted.

God has demonstrated to me that His love is unconditional and I must admit that was a difficult concept for me to grasp. I conducted my life as if it were a software program coded by an IF THEN ELSE condition clause. If I do this, then God will do that or else. There is a scripture which is so appropriate for that kind of thinking:

“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”²

In my mind, if God didn’t answer my prayer it was because I missed an instruction step in my flawless program, all I needed to do was debug it, correct the problem, and re-run the code. Early on in my studies of programming languages, I learned the phrase, GIGO, which means, Garbage In, Garbage Out. It never occurred to me that I was following the wrong set of instructions; after all, this was my code!

I don’t know about anybody else but this thinking was constructed out of a concept that God was a kind of genie. Now I didn’t refer to God as my own personal genie, but it strikes me that this is how I essentially viewed Him. Rub-a-dub-dub, say a prayer, and presto change-o, my prayer would be answered by God. Problems began to mount as I experienced unanswered responses from my genie...errrr God. This led me to become frustrated with God, and when that happened, I cut off His access to me. As silly as this may sound, I thought I was in control of this relationship with God. I would teach Him a lesson, either do as I say, or You get nothing from me. I was certain He’d get my message.

I really didn’t understand the concept of God’s sovereignty. Because of this, I didn’t understand that God had another kind of routine running in the background of my life (the Holy Spirit). One thing I’ve learned from a career in IT is that software routines which run in the background (or behind the scenes) are actually more critical to the ability of software running in the foreground; allowing them to function correctly.

I won’t bore you with geek-speak but something as simple as the movement of a mouse requires software code that maps a display screen so that anytime you move that mouse, you see the display symbol of where your mouse is pointed. What you see (and care about) is where the mouse points on the screen, what you don’t see is the background software (set of instructions) that indicates movement of the mouse.

So in my case, God has (a kind of software routine called) the Holy Spirit running in my background which I was totally unaware of. The routine wants to bring me to a point of true submission, to a place of dependency, to the presence of God; but before that can happen, it must deal with the viruses running around in my mind.

One virus which was particularly problematic was my view of God. God had to rid me of the virus of conditional love and replace it with unconditional love. This would mean that I needed to first accept that God loves me unconditionally; I also needed to recognize that my understanding of this belief was unimportant. I say this because there are many things in life which I don’t understand and yet, I accept the belief in their existence and operation.

For example, I don’t have to understand the internal mechanics of a combustion engine; I just need to accept that a unique key will start my car. I don’t have to know if the pilot flying the plane I’m in has twenty years of experience or two months, I simply need a boarding pass to believe I will arrive at my destination.

So I accept that God loves me unconditionally but I also had to learn to accept that answers to my prayers weren’t based on anything I said or did; which meant accepting the sovereignty of God as well. God isn’t required or obligated to answer my prayers in the way I want.

I had to learn to accept that God could say to me,

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”³

...And yet, still love me unconditionally.

God isn’t obligated to explain why He chooses to act or not act on my behalf. I had to learn to accept this aspect of our relationship. But just as I had to accept God’s unconditional love, I had to learn how to give love unconditionally. This background routine of God’s has been running in the background for years but the thing I realize now is that it was a scheduled routine that initiated when God called it to run. It has been running for a long time but I find that I am only now at the fountain that quenches my thirst.

In order for me to deny myself, I must love unconditionally. I can place no constraints on the relationship I have with God or others. There is nothing they can do to get me to love them. It is something I choose to do.

Everything in my life can be failing but not God’s love and now I can finally say, “Not my love for Him”. Those in my life, family, friends, peers and those whom God needs me to interact with will receive my love unconditionally; I choose to freely give love.

This then for me is denying myself.

I’m thankful that the Holy Spirit is running in me, ensuring that I’m available when God calls me, that I’m open to go or do what He asks. Not because I’m looking for something in return, but simply because I love God and for no other reason.

It occurs to me that I’ve said much already and I’ve only talked about denying myself to follow Christ. I hope that you will allow me to continue this discussion tomorrow. I certainly appreciate the time you’ve given me today.

Father God,

You have established a covenant with us through Your precious Son, Jesus Christ; a covenant built upon Your tremendous love and grace. The words of Christ echo in my thoughts but they echo throughout all eternity as well; follow Me. You demonstrate the magnitude and depth of Your love and You invite me to drink and partake in the marvelous ministry of salvation. I submit my life to you wholly and without reservation. I am Your's forever. I can never buy or repay Your goodness but I can love you without conditions. Thank You for freeing my life in this area. I invite You to create in me the attributes that truely demonstrate one who follows Christ. Amen.

Footnotes:

1. Luke 9:23, NASB
2. 1 Corinthians 2:14, NASB
3. Isaiah 55:9, NASB

References:

1. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, By James B. Strong, S.T.D, LL.D., Riverside Book and Bible House, Iowa Falls, Iowa 50126
2. The Ryrie Study Bible (New American Standard Version), Edited by Charles C. Ryrie, Moody Publishers, Chicago, Illinois, ISBN 0-8024-8920-6
3. We Need to Hear From You, Lyrics by Andrae' Crouch, 1982, Light Records
4. From Stem Cells to Tooth In the Mouth of a Mouse, Written by Jeremy Singer-Vine, August 10, 2009, Wall Street Journal