Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. This is week three of Red Letter Invitations, and we are about to up the intensity this week, aren't we Jeremy? Yes.
It's quite the start to a series, to be honest. When you come out of Easter, and you get the intense story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and now for the first three weeks of this series, we are seeing that there is a rhythm in this, where we come to me, then it's follow me, and now we're gonna hear this invitation of take up your cross, right? And I know that because I know the series, it is going to take a turn after this, but Jeremy, what are you kind of hoping in this third part of the series? Where are you hoping our groups will go, in light of where we're heading over the next several after this?
Yeah, ultimately this week is about that heart check, and that they've progressively moved from, okay, we wanna stop striving and come to Jesus. We wanna stop making excuses and follow Jesus. And now we've gotta ask ourselves, are there still those things that I'm hanging onto, those things that either feel like a core part of who I am, or a core fear, or these are the same questions that the very first Christians would have had to ask after Jesus literally died and rose again, these followers had to say, what does it really look like to follow Jesus? And so this week, we wanna help people really get to that point of saying, is this really what I want?
Like not just is this kind of what I'm used to? Does this sound good? But when I really lay it all on the line, is this what my heart wants? Do I want Jesus and the life that he has for me?
Instead of the life that I feel like I could put together for myself. So we had in come to me, was a beautiful illustration of Jesus comparing a yoke, he's like my yoke is easy. And you get this sense of being linked together and Jesus being this stronger party. And he can say that his yoke is easy because he will be able to shoulder any burden that we have alongside.
Well today, in this scripture, Romans 834, we're gonna get another illustration here that's a little harder on the palate, right? I'm just gonna read it real quick because I think it adds so much to our conversation. So calling the crowd along with his disciples, he said to them, He wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Now, this story takes place obviously before good Friday.
So it takes place before the time where Jesus will literally have a cross on his back and walk through it, being paraded through the town, right? But the cross would not have been an unfamiliar scene for people in the first century. They would have seen the cross in the same way that we talk about the cross on good Friday. They would have already seen the cross in that way.
And now what Jesus is saying, pre-pre-cruise of fiction for himself. He's saying, if you wanna follow me, you have to pick up your own cross. You need to pick up the device that's intended for your own death. Jeremy, how are we supposed to prepare for this conversation?
This is so intense, right? Yeah, because not only was it your own death, it was like you said, people would have seen this because the whole point was not just how can we make death as miserable as possible, but how can we make a public statement of the people that are being put to death so that no one else will dare follow in their footsteps. And so the people who would have been crucified were typically enemies of the empire, of the ruling authority. And so for Jesus to say, take up your cross and to follow him, I mean, this is a revolutionary statement.
And so really this week, I encourage leaders to pray. Like if you're even listening on your way to group right now, like whatever little bit of prayer time you can get, grab it. If you're preparing ahead of time, really spend some focus time in prayer because this week, even more so, if possible, than the weeks that have been leading up to it, really do come down to the heart. And again, we can say the right things, we can do the right things, but ultimately to follow Jesus, to be a disciple of Jesus is about our heart.
And are we willing to take up that cross, die to ourselves? And we'll talk about that here in a minute, what that means, but deny ourselves, die to ourselves, and say there's another authority that's even greater than I am. And no matter what that looks like, I'm willing to surrender to that authority. Like that's a deep heart issue.
And so more than anything, I would beg leaders to just be prayerful going into this time. Yeah, it's so important for us as leaders, especially on a topic like this, to do the work with Jesus ahead of time, so that Jesus can do the work in the hearts of our group in partnership with us. You said something about the cross that really startled me to be honest. The cross was an instrument of public declaration that led to death.
And in our groups, when we wrestle with a passage like this, the invitation to take up a cross to really follow Jesus, it might be worth our time in our group. And this is where we're kind of getting, how do we take our conversation deeper? And I'm really curious what else you've got for us on this, but for us to make a public spectacle of something that needs to die. Is there something going on in our life?
Are there things that we're glossing over, there's things that we're disregarding that we need to share with one another? Honestly, this is the rhythm of repentance, right? Where we stop and we say, you know what, there's still is this area of my life that I need to put to death. It is part of my old self to use some Colossians language that needs to go away because I have been risen with Jesus into a new life.
That's about as deep of a group time as I can imagine. Wow. Yeah, and see even right now, as people listen, this is the beauty of groups and conversation because as you hear something that I say and it stirs up something else in your mind and now doing the same, like that idea of, what is it that we need to put to death in a public way, even in our group? And again, you've talked before about kind of how to gauge levels of appropriateness there and who to kind of share with first, but what is it that we need to do to put to death those sins?
And one of the other things that I realized in preparing this lesson is that the context of this passage, Peter has just given, you know, there's the whole who do people say that I am? Jesus is just as his disciples, who do people say that I am? What are the different opinions about me? And people gave all the different answers about you're a teacher, a prophet, John the Baptist, Elijah, and Peter through the Holy Spirit confesses Jesus to be the Christ and Jesus praises that declaration and saying kind of this understanding of Jesus of the Christ that Peter has just made will be the foundation for the church, for generations to come.
And then he begins talking about how the Messiah's gonna have to die. And Peter says, no, no, no, no, no, and kind of jumps up and gets dark rebuke from Jesus immediately after this praise from Jesus. And that's the context for where Jesus says, anyone who wants to follow me is gonna have to take up their cross. Jesus obviously is the only one who can die for our sins is that sacrifice but to follow Jesus, it's not just kind of the, it's not just the good stuff that we want from following Jesus.
It's gonna mean I have to trust his way over my way and I have to submit ultimately to his authority, even when I don't understand, even when it seems painful. And that's what he invites us into is give me all of your life. And we can trust him because we see throughout scripture that as the Creator, he knows what's best for our lives. So when we're dying to ourselves, we're dying to this attempt to rule our own lives.
It's easy, I think for us with a Western American cultural experience for us to make a little bit light of this concept, you'll sometimes hear people say, well, it's just some across the bear and they're kind of talking about like the morning carpool routine or whatever it is. And it's like I get what people are saying and sometimes it's pretty funny. But I think this invitation here is a bit more of, I was about to say literal, it could be, it is for most of the disciples down the road for them. They literally were martyred because of their faith in Jesus.
But I think what the invitation is this week is a rabbit trail or a trouble point might be that we don't go deep enough. But the invitation here is to say, okay, let's not make little of what Jesus is saying and let's also not elevate some of the things that we think sometimes about my cross the bear. We all have things in our life that are annoyance, an annoying or we have grievances in our life and things like that. But let's really take a hard look at the areas of our life where we go, that is hard for me to do that.
Meaning if I choose to follow Jesus in all areas of my life, this is gonna be one that is really, really tough to talk about. To give a really brief example, that's a very real one for me. My relationship with my biological father for the majority of my early Christian life, so came to Jesus when I was 18, trying to figure out how do I reconcile with my biological father was one of those things where I was like not there, Jesus. I'm not ready for that yet.
And in many ways, I think as I follow Jesus, this is one of those things where I felt like he was saying, you have to deny yourself in this aspect in order for God to redeem in the way that only he could. I didn't wanna deal with it. I was not ready to go there. And yet Jesus was saying, do you really wanna gain all of my kingdom?
Do you wanna gain all of me? Because he wanted to redeem even the darkest, most painful parts of my life. But it required me to take up my own cross and die to that aspect of myself, right? Take us a little bit further on this idea of denying ourselves so that leaders can be really prepared for this week.
Yeah, that's such a great example in helping people understand what this means and that in that case, dying to self, even included a reconciliation that was difficult. One thing that in my own life that dying to myself, kind of taking up my cross, for me, I used to constantly mistake the more spiritually mature thing to do, the more Christ-like or God-honoring thing to do whenever I had a choice to make. If I didn't hear a clear word from God, then clearly it must be the more difficult thing, the less attractive thing. If it came down to career or how surely it must be the job that pays less or is more than, just whatever is less appealing, must be the more godly thing because that's what it means to deny myself.
I don't wanna make any decision based on what I would want. But again, to deny ourselves, God's not calling us to, you see throughout scripture, to all the Psalms, just constantly that God as creator, even in the garden we see that He created the fruit that was pleasing to the eye and good to the taste. He created our senses, He desires to see flourishing, but the rebellion from the garden was the desire to be in control and declare for ourselves what is good. And so to deny for ourselves, it doesn't mean we never get to enjoy things.
It doesn't mean that we always have to choose the harder or more difficult things, but that we're putting Christ not just as our top priority, but He is our priority. And so when we have clarity, we trust Him, we follow Him, when we don't, we seek to honor Him, and we enjoy the good gifts that He's blessed us with. So I wanna make sure the groups don't steer off into the idea that to deny ourselves, to take up our cross is always gonna be this miserable life of just a vow of poverty, I can never have any fun. That's a good reminder.
That is good. And so following Him is good. Yes, and as a follower of Jesus, there's actually the greatest source of joy. Life can be filled with joy as a follower of Jesus and it doesn't have to be the stripping away of like you're saying all those things that we enjoy in life.
No, no, no, that's, we actually get to things taste sweeter, things smell better when filtered through our relationship with Jesus, right? The life's experience gets better because of Him, not in spite of Him. So that's really great Jeremy. Any kind of sort of final thoughts for us, perhaps questions, rabbit trails that we might get stuck on, anything that you would do just to help clear the path one more time for us?
Circle back just to at the end of your conversation, at the end of your time together, really take a moment for people to consider as specifically as possible, what it may mean to follow Jesus and ask them just to kind of search their hearts and say, do you believe Jesus is worth it? And we're gonna be getting into that in future messages. And so this just again, kind of primes the pump in this series as we go step by step, each kind of each week stands alone, but it also leads into where we're headed. So have them really start wrestling with, do I really value Jesus above and beyond anything else in this world?
That's great. Well, leaders, we're grateful for you as always. Walking along this with you is joyful for Jeremy and I, to be able to consider what God is doing in and through you, how you are making a significant impact in the lives of people. We're just truly humbled and grateful to be a part of this with you.
So if there's anything you need from us, would you let us know? Otherwise we will. See you next week. Take care everyone.