“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If any of you wants to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow Me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for My sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?’” (Matthew 16:24-26 NLT)
To follow Jesus Christ, who was betrayed, wept, bled, and died before He rose again, is to be at high risk of being taken where we had not intended to go. Eugene Peterson pinpoints the trouble with prayer: “We are often asked to respond in ways that we never intended when we first began to pray.”
It matters little where or in what century we are called to live out our Christian life. The witness of those who have gone before informs my own experience, telling me that we are often taken to places where we receive unwarranted accolades and to other places where we receive unwarranted suffering and pain. A disciple, one who chooses to be a student and follower of Jesus, is not a “self-made person” and is not on a personally designed journey… We choose to follow Jesus and then Jesus chooses where we will go. It is that simple.
The saving truth here is not that we are taken where we do not want to go, rather the saving truth is that we are not alone. There is One who leads us and who goes with us… While we may not choose the places to go, we can choose to remain with the One who sends us and there find comfort, companionship, grace, peace, and joy in Christ.
-- Adapted from
Rueben P. Job in “A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God”
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