Are we there yet?

Second Sunday In Lent| Year B | Mark 8:31-9:9 | TJ Torgerson

"Jesus gathered the crowd alongside his disciples and said to them, 'If any of you want to follow me, you must deny yourself, pick up your cross, and continually follow me. Whoever wants to preserve their life will lose it; however, anyone who is willing to lose their life because of me and the good news will save it." - Mark 8:34-35 (My Translation)

Two weeks ago was Transfiguration Sunday, and here we are again with this passage before us. Whenever I read a passage like this, I think to myself how incredible it would have been to be there and to see that. Or whenever I read a story about how God did some incredible thing in a faraway place or time, like the Great Awakening or, in more recent years, the story of Asbury. I think to myself, wouldn’t it be incredible to be a part of that!

Or I hear stories about people who have memorized large portions of the Bible or who spend hours in prayer and seem to have a close relationship with God, and it is easy to be envious and desire a relationship with God like that. Just this past week, I saw a clip on YouTube. It was a man on a street-type of interview. In this clip, a young lady said she wishes she could believe and have a personal connection with God like many of the Christians she sees. She said she has tried, but she just can’t believe.

Let’s say, for purposes of illustration, that Peter, James, and John knew exactly what they would get to see when they went up the mountain. They knew Jesus would show them his true glory. However, as they approached the mountain, they came to a gate and above the gate was a sign that in big, bold letters read, “Now showing: Transfiguration of the Son of God,” and next to the gate was a ticket booth with an awkward teenage kid making minimum wage standing there. Peter and the others say, 'We would like 3 tickets, please.'

I wonder what it that ticket cost Peter, James, and John. They had traveled with Jesus for about 3 years at that point. They very soon would go through the pain of losing a friend. Peter would have to deal with the guilt and the shame of denying Christ. They all would suffer persecutions, and Peter and James would be killed for Christ. They would try to kill John, but it wouldn’t take, so instead, he was exiled to an island. After hearing the cost, would they have still climbed up the mountain? I, of course, do not want to reduce what happened down to a “show,” but do you get the point?

We hear about the revival, but we may not ever know of the hours of prayer, suffering, and toil that happened before that. We crave for God to show up here like Asbury, but have we ever stopped to consider that all it would take is people willing to stay and worship and pray rather than hurry out the door to conquer the day's to-do list?

We see that person with what seems to be a close relationship with God, but what we don’t see is the hours spent in prayer, service and communication with God -- day in and day out. And before that, we didn’t see the struggle to pray for just five or a few minutes a day. We don’t see the early morning alarms. We don’t see the doubts and the questions they have wrestled and still wrestle with. We don’t see the times they have shaken their fist at God and yelled, “WHY!?” We don’t see the times when they didn’t have a tear to shed or anything to yell because of the complete emptiness and silence they were experiencing.

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Jesus says to continually follow him. We often want to skip some steps. We want the transfiguration, but we don’t want to take up the cross. We want the resurrection, but we would rather not have the death. The only way to follow is one step at a time. As we follow, there will be times when the cross we are carrying seems like a pretty piece of jewelry around our neck or a comforting symbol in our pocket. However, there will be other times when it is big and heavy and ugly, and we have a profound realization, as we follow Jesus in front of us, exactly where this path takes us. Everything within us will resist it. Our sense of self-preservation will kick in. We will want to drop the cross and save ourselves, but Jesus says it doesn’t work that way. Jesus says trust me. Follow me. Do not stop. Take the step in front of you and then the next one.

The decision to follow Jesus is not a one-time event. It's one step at a time, one day at a time. Consider Abraham who comes up in the NT reading this week (Romans 4:13-25). God comes to him saying, “go to a new land!” Abraham says okay. God says I am going to give you a son. Abraham is 99, yet he says okay, God. Then after God gives him a son, God says give me back your son — sacrifice him — Abraham says okay.

The same is true in our life. — God keeps saying take the next step into uncertainty — trust me — follow me – have faith. And what is faith? Faith is simply acting like God is telling the truth. Do not look only at, what to you looks like, the end goal and be discourage that you are not there. Just look at the path in front of you. What is your next step of faith? Your next step of denying self? If you have not been in the habit of spending any time with God, do not start by declaring that you will be just like so and so and pray for 2 hours a day every day! Instead, maybe build a habit of 5 minutes a day. Maybe build a habit of 1 minute. Friend, God loves you. He is good. You can trust him.

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