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Published: 07 November 2014

The words of Jesus in our text for Sunday seem pretty tough on the surface. “Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The sentence begins with a condition, “If.” Being Jesus’ student is a choice. It is amazing to me that the Creator of the Universe and Lord of all that is would give us a choice in this matter but it is clearly His point. He values His image in us so highly that He refuses to violate our will. If we choose Him as our Teacher and Guide for life, there are some requirements. First, we must deny ourselves. That statement used to conjure up images in my mind of starvation, cold and self-depravation. Actually, Jesus is asking those who learn from Him to choose His way when other ways conflict with His ways…especially when our own desires conflict with His desires. Second, we are to take up our cross. He didn’t say His cross, He didn’t say we had to die on the cross. What did He mean? We have an equivalent phrase in our day, we would say, “Burn your bridges behind you.” It means there is no going back, there is no vacillation of will, there is commitment to Him and His ways. “Follow Me” means that we walk with Him. Walking with Him means we identify with Him, we are not ashamed to be seen with Him or to be known as His. It means we are in partnership for His purposes. We must not think that Jesus is the only one asking for such things. He is one of many who are asking for commitment, loyalty and participation. Football coaches, employers, educators and sometimes well-meaning family members ask for the same. They all know that to excel at something means commitment. They know that a choice to do one thing is a choice to not do something else. We simply can’t follow everyone and please everyone to the samedegree. So, the question is “Who will you follow?” God willing, we’ll explore this subject in more detail as we gather on the Lord’s Day.

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Published: 31 October 2014

It’s quite funny in a peculiar way to think that all our modern conveniences were designed to “save us time” and “simplify our lives.” I have several treasured books that were written and published in the 1800’s and quite often the authors refer to the “harried pace of the day.” People are busy, people are lazy, people are distracted, people are crazy. I know you have a lot going on, I do too. I think people have always been busy, I guess the question is, “What is that busyness producing?” If we are simply staying busy to avoid something that should really be dealt with, we ought to stop. If we are staying busy because we are too afraid to stop, we ought to stop. If we are staying busy to keep people happy and “keep up impression”, we ought to stop. However, if we are busy pursuing righteousness, holiness and peace, we ought to stay after it. If we are busy loving God and people, we ought to stay after it. If we are busy spending life, we should stop long enough to figure out how to invest it. Getting tired is normal; what are you getting tired for…does it matter? I have an ulterior motive in writing about this today. This weekend is our Missions Emphasis and our Missions Task Force and Staff have planned a couple of extra events for the weekend that I hope you will attend. Saturday Night we’re having a time of worship and dessert we call “New Song Café.” Sunday Night, we’re having a guest speaker named Bill Brittain who is going to talk about how we can bring hope to hurting children and families. We’re trying to establish a culture of adoption and foster care here at CBC and believe that men like Bill can inspire us to do more in our community than “take a stand.” It might be better if we lend a hand! Dr. Ishak Ahmed will be preaching on Sunday Morning; I know you’ll be blessed by this brother from India—God is at work. I know you’re too busy for all this but I’m asking you to make time for it because I think it will be helpful and edifying for you. “Back in the old days, a missions conference would meet every night of the week.” I can’t imagine doing something like that in these days but I do think this time of special emphasis will be a beneficial if you could take a little extra time and join us. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to read this—I hope to see you Saturday night and Sunday AM and PM this weekend….