When You’re Stuck on How to Do Christianity, Do This
Your Nightly Prayer for Dec. 10. 2024
by Shawn McEvoy
TONIGHT’S SCRIPTURE
"If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." - Mark 8:34, NAS
SOMETHING TO PONDER
It’s widely believed, with plenty of scriptural evidence to back it up, that three is a holy number, representing our triune God, a sense of completion or wholeness, even perfection. And we know it to be true among our favorite practical Bible verses. Think about how well Micah summed up so much of the Law just by asking, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Or Paul, when he boils down “God’s will for you in Christ” to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks.”
Oh, we don’t find these directives easy by any means, but they are simplified and memorable – snippets we can carry with us when we struggle to know what to do.
While I’d never want to be accused of calling the Calling of the Christian “formulaic,” this is nonetheless how Jesus himself is recorded in Matthew (16:24), in Mark, and in Luke (9:23), so it must be important, must have rung a clear bell in the testimonies of the apostles. If you want to follow me, if you want a part in this kingdom, here’s another simple-but-difficult list that leads to completion:
1 – Deny Self
2 – Bend Over and Pick Up an Actual Cursed Instrument of Death
3 – Get Moving As I Moved
But why would anyone choose that road? What does it mean, and what does it look like?
To deny oneself can look like repentance, which itself can figuratively be thought of as turning around, doing a 180 from going your own way, falling to your knees, and agreeing with God about your condition. That explicit website, that extra order of dessert, that relationship or temptation – you absolutely have the option of turning your back on it at this moment, denying yourself what your Self thinks it wants, and putting your eyeballs in the exact opposite direction, often into the warm and welcoming face of your Savior who was waiting for you.
Taking up your cross involves standing back up from your kneeling position firm in the knowledge of your own death and the torturous existence that insisting upon your own way had created. But now, with your eyes in the right place and with a constant reminder of the pain, the burden becomes more bearable, the load lighter by the hour, and true life returns to your soul.
And then you can follow Jesus with life-giving no-matter-what faith. And what did Jesus do? He sought out those in need, not the healthy but the sick. He left the ninety-nine to find the one. He gave up any trust in possessions to capture hearts. He told us to love God with everything that is in us and to love our neighbors as ourselves. He grieved for those who missed the point by turning God’s good ways into punitive religious directives rather than an umbrella of grace from under which to do God’s work. And he ate, drank, laughed, suffered, wept, touched, taught, and died… and rose again to new life.
YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER
Lord, Your ways provide a challenge and a handicap for us in our materialistic modern world, where we have so much to lose. But that’s exactly why, immediately upon telling us how to come after you, you ask what it would profit a person to gain the whole world but lose his or her soul (Mark 8:36). But those who have dared to walk in your way bear witness to having known the light of freedom and grace, of being loosed from the shackles of fear and loss in this world. Though you demand, we take up our cross, and you also assure us the burden is light. Though you move me towards completion and perfection every day, I know I will not attain it until I see you face-to-face. Until then, thank you for your forgiveness and the chance to always begin again by denying, standing, and walking.
In your precious name, amen.
THREE THINGS TO MEDITATE UPON
1. In the gospels, Jesus introduced the concept of “a cross” well in advance of his actual crucifixion. How would that have landed with you as someone considering following him? Does it land any differently after-the-fact, knowing the story as you do now?
2. Can you think of any other Bible verses that involve a not-so-simple trio of directives?
3. What does the Holy Trinity look like in your mind?
Photo Credit: ©Pexels/Karolina Kaboompics
Shawn McEvoy is the Executive Director of Content for Salem Web Network, where he has served to create Kingdom-blessing media since 2005. He actually gets to manage the teams that produce the good stuff on Crosswalk.com, Christianity.com, BibleStudyTools.com, iBelieve.com and GodTube.com. Shawn is also the former co-host of Crosswalk's Video Movie Reviews and the Inside the Editors' Room podcast.
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Originally published Tuesday, 10 December 2024.
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