Taking Up Your Cross

Hi, this is Dave Scherrerrer, and you found the podcast environment of 100 Full Ministries we call it Kingdom Offerings. And today, I'm wondering whether or not you remember from quite a ways back, if you're probably, I don't know, 30 or younger, you might not remember this, but there used to be some Charlie Brown cartoons on TV. And when Charlie Brown's teacher started talking to her class, the sound of her voice sounded something like this. So I'm telling you, Charlie Brown's teacher kind of had it rough. All anyone ever heard was wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, and poor Peppermint Patty, she just couldn't keep awake. She would fall asleep at her desk, and her head would fall forward, and her head would fall back, and poor Charlie Brown was so scared for her. We laugh because we identify with the Charlie Brown person. We laugh because too many of our teachers sounded like wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Maybe we laugh because we identify with the teacher who feels like everybody's falling asleep when I'm trying to talk. I know that's how pastors feel sometimes. But sometimes what is being fed to us, what is being said to us, just doesn't sound important. It feels like it's just noise. And if I'm tired enough, I can sleep through the noise. And sometimes I think the Bible is a little bit like that. We hear a verse, we read a verse, we don't understand it, and it just sort of becomes noise to us, and we kind of fall asleep. We want to ignore it. We read it, and we think, well, this can't be right. This can't apply to me. Like this one. This is from Luke 14, where Jesus teaches on what it means to be a disciple, the cost of discipleship. So in Luke 14, beginning in verse 25, He says, Now the great crowds accompanied Him, and He turned and said to them, Here we go. This is the hard part. If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his or her own life, they cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. So that was Jesus talking. So that's rough. That's pretty straightforward. And He wasn't done. Just a few verses later, He says, So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple. Okay, so I don't know your journey. Let me tell you a little bit about mine. When I heard the plan of salvation back in 1970, when I was a 16-year-old teenager, I had no idea that what Jesus had just said right there about picking up your own cross and that being a part of being a disciple, I hardly knew me. I for sure didn't know Jesus. And at that part of my life, I had no idea that that was part of the deal of the Christian faith. What I heard was that Jesus loved me and that He had died for my sins. And by His death on the cross and resurrection, Jesus could forgive me of all my sin. And somebody asked me if I believed that. And I said, I can remember saying, I think so. And I want to say, weirdly, everything changed for me in an instant. I barely knew what I was doing. But in the language of the day, I did indeed give my life to Jesus. But in that moment, no one told me I would have to suffer. That I would have to pick up my cross. That I would have to renounce my world and my family. I think if I had heard that at the time, my head would have said, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. I don't know that I could have, I don't know that I could process that. The Apostle Paul put it this way. He said, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you'll be saved. So that all sounds real straightforward, I think it is. Unless it isn't. You see, it is the, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord part, that part of that verse, that I think we tend to mess up. We put our accent on the confessing with your mouth part, as though that were the operative part of the sentence. As though all we have to do is say out loud to someone, Jesus is Lord. And actually, the important part of that sentence is the Lord part. You see, in the first century, the word Lord would have meant something, something really important, different than it does today. Up to 30% of ancient Rome was a slave. And the rest of the world lived under the lordship, the authority of the Roman army. So to be Lord meant to be the absolute life and death ruler of another person's life. So Jesus is asking more of me than to simply believe. The Bible says that the demons believe, and they tremble. They even confess it with their mouths, we read. And yet at this point, we know that they also know that Jesus is risen from the dead. But they have not yielded to His authority. Their kingdom allegiance is to the kingdom of darkness and the values of this temporary broken world. They are under the allegiance of the evil one. To surrender to the king of heaven is to give up on this world, is to turn your back on everything in this world, to renounce it all, and as Jesus says, even your own life. So I want to tell you, that is not the deal that I had in mind at age 16. I had no idea. Now fast forward with me for 48 years. God has graciously walked with me in my plotting faith. He has revealed that in this world, you will find trouble and that it is passing away. That the values of this world are hollow, that they're ill-founded, that the gods of this world are going to let you down. And I discovered in my walk with Jesus that I will only be truly happy when I have fully yielded to His rule and reign. His values, His priorities, His agenda, not my agenda. So when I was a kid, the more invested in Jesus' rule and reign, the less and less my family understood. My dad grew up with a real nominal church experience and he was largely a pure skeptic when it came to being more than casually invested in religion. He kind of had this idea that if you don't bother God, God won't bother you. So when I decided as a young man, a 21-year-old man, that I was going to join the staff of Youth for Christ and not go on and become a lawyer, he essentially said, if you go into a job where you have to raise your own pay by begging our family, you are throwing your life away. He told me to never send one of those prayer letters to anyone that he knows, certainly no one in the family. And for 20 years, my dad and I were largely, I don't want to say an enmity, but we were not close. He tried to understand, but to him, I was simply throwing my life away. I was throwing my potential away. I was living in near poverty. He didn't understand. So I didn't send letters to my family, but I did go into the ministry. And over time, I raised the mission support that I needed. And I've spent the last 48 years in full-time ministry. And then over time, my dad saw the kingdom for himself and he yielded his life to the King of Kings. And over time, I learned that giving up what you cannot keep to have what you cannot lose is indeed no sacrifice. Thank you, Jim Elliott, for that profound hope. And thank you for listening in to Kingdom Offerings. Let's think together what it might mean to renounce the world, to give our allegiance to Jesus Christ and His kingdom. That is the good news, the gospel of the kingdom. Peace to you. This is Dave Scherrerrer on 100 Full Ministries. Look forward to seeing you again soon. 100 Full Ministries www.100fullministries.org