I mentioned Peter’s good confession in an earlier post. Today something else catches my eye:
It’s the phrase “you must give up your own way” (New Living Translation). There are two things that Jesus insists upon here. First, we must surrender our self will. That’s easy to say and from my experience, harder to do. However it is necessary none-the-less. In another place in Scripture Jesus speaks about the fact that we cannot love both God and money. That thought finds it’s parallel here. Our “self”, the identity that we were born with, and have embraced our whole lives has to die. I explain it this way: There is a philosophy of life in each of us from birth. Think of it like an operating system on the computer. It’s what makes everything run, and it influences everything. Inside us, this operating system is self aware, and works to protect itself from harm. Before we learned of Jesus and His commandments we found this system of living to be quite acceptable. Self preservation comes from this system. Self love, self esteem, self determination…all come from this operating system. We were born with it already operating, and everyone we knew and interacted with most likely had the same system operational in their lives. In fact, many books have been written celebrating “self”. Since almost everyone is driven by self, the advertisers appeal to it when trying to sell you something. “you deserve a break today” and thousands of other lines appeal to our sense of self. Although we don’t think about it very often, self generally gets what it wants, because it controls everything. Self controls our thoughts and desires, and influences them to get whatever it wants. Self always puts itself first, the needs, wants and desires of “self” come before anything and anyone else. That is the basic programming language of self. Me first, me last, me always.
Everything is fine as long as you go along with self. Most of the world makes sense and you don’t have many problems relating to others or communicating with them, because they have the same basic system you do. They may not agree with you, but they understand why you are the way you are, and why you do what you’re doing.
Enter Jesus.
Jesus says “self” must die. Hmmm. Okay, then how will the body operate? Jesus says that a new operating system will be installed, one that comes from heaven, called “The Holy Spirit”. This Spirit will develop a new operating system within you that always puts Jesus first. Jesus first, Jesus last, Jesus always. Somehow, we come to the conclusion that it would be a good thing to change the way we operate. Even as a part of us screams “I don’t think this is a good idea” we confess our sins and turn our lives over to Christ. Game over, right? Hardly.
That old operating system is still running, it hasn’t left yet. In fact you will have to open file after file and delete it out of your life sections at a time. If the whole thing were to crash all at once you wouldn’t survive it, since it has such a pervasive influence in your life. It will have to be removed in installments, and the first installment occurs when you invite Jesus (the new operating system) into your life. Now, you know that Jesus is a person, not an operating system, but I’m using the illustration to help us understand.
Jesus will begin to point to areas that need to be surrendered. The old system will scream every time we try to change. It will fight back, it will use all it’ defenses to try and remain alive. It will even “play dead” until you look away, and then it will crawl off somewhere to regenerate so it can fight another day. It will take constant vigilance and effort to make sure it’s gone. I’m not entirely sure we can live long enough to see it completely gone, but Jesus says that it’s possible, so I believe Him.
The goal of the old system is to get us to rely on it. The goal of the new system is to put the old one to death.
In this passage Jesus says “give it up”. Instead of thinking of self, we are to think of Christ. That means doing what He wants us to do, even if it happens to be uncomfortable or unfamiliar. Whatever Jesus wants for us is actually good for us, but the old operating system will try and convince us that it’s bad.
So Jesus says “pick up your cross daily and follow me”. He appeals to us to obey the new way of thinking by speaking to us through the old way of thinking. Listen, if Jesus wants us to do it, then it must be good for us and wonderful for others. Doing it will bring honor and glory to God, so of course we should be delighted to do whatever He wants. The only thing holding us back is that old system, ignore it. Dismiss it. Tell it that you refuse to operate based on it’s input any longer. From this day forward, whatever Jesus wants will be what you want. People around who still live the old way won’t understand. Your decisions will no longer make sense to them, and they may find you strange. Even worse, they may find you dangerous and try to harm you. At the very least they will dismiss you as crazy or confused.
So why go to all the bother? Simple, just like this passage says, Jesus will accept anyone who embraces Him. If we don’t accept and operate with Him in control of our lives, every part of our lives….then He won’t accept us either.
Nothing could be better than to live forever in heaven with Jesus and all the other like-minded people who have come before us. I implore you to choose Jesus over the things of earth, choose Jesus over what you think makes sense based on self. Put self to death and follow Christ.
You will be happier in this life, and ecstatic in the next,
PR