From today’s reading of Matthew 16, Mark 8, and Luke 9:18-27

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” – Mark 8:34-38 (ESV)

It’s hard to know what to do with this. I would follow after Jesus. I am following after Jesus, and pursuing him, but this pursuit fights against every fiber of my flesh and has many zig-zags, stoppings, trippings, and side-streets.

For a long time I thought of faith in terms of believing in certain facts, like believing in the theory of relativity or that the country of China exists. In other words, believing in something based on the available evidence but where I didn’t have the tools at hand, necessarily, to fully verify what I believe in. So faith in Jesus was believing that he is, and that he came to earth as a man, lived a perfect life, paid for my sins on the cross, died, was buried, was risen to life and is coming again.

It is very good to believe in those things. And it touches upon faith to believe in them. But that belief is not exactly, or completely, faith.

Faith is leaping off a cliff and trusting in the one who has promised to catch you to do what he said. Faith lived out is, from a fleshly point of view, self-destructive and dangerous. I think in the past I have read Jesus’ words above wrongly. I have seen them as transactional, and – hear me out here – threatening. What I have heard him saying is “if you don’t give me everything, I’m going to leave you and eventually kill you.” Again, be patient with me and bear with my foolishness here.

I believe I had that wrong. I think what Jesus is saying is that he is life, and there is ultimately no life to be found anywhere else. What will I chase? What will I pursue? To whom will I go? He alone has the words of eternal life. If I don’t deny myself, I am indulging myself. I am feeding the idol of Self, and there is no life there. I’m going to die and lose everything if I go that way. Our world is rife with examples of people who have done just that. Jesus is not making a deal with me with his words. He is just speaking the truth about who he is and who I am, and what I am without him.

Jesus calls me to self-abandoned devotion to and single-minded focus on him, because he desires to give me life. This is so important, because it gets at the core of the call of God, calling me toward life in a way that will seem like death to my befuddled and sinful soul. I hear him calling me to carry a cross and deny myself – which is true – but he says that is the way leading to life for all who would follow him.

The words he says are not necessarily easier to integrate or live out knowing this. Jesus doesn’t call me to easy. But he does call me out of idolatry, out of shame, out of needless pursuits and into himself, into love, into purpose, into life. And those are things worth running hard after.

He is completely worth it.

Lord, convince my divided heart and doubled mind to run hard, and with self-abandon, after you.