620 Why We Must Follow - Mark 8:34

Was it your goal in life to be a follower? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One and it wasn't my goal in life to be a follower. But thanks for joining me on the Follower of One Podcast. 

Jesus is talking with the disciples in this passage and he asked them who they think He is. Peter makes a famous confession and Jesus commends him. But in the next moment, Peter liked me, and many of us go a little too far. He says something a little strange. He kind of sticks his foot in his mouth and Jesus corrects him and corrects him sharply and he tells Peter and everyone else that he sees that we must follow Him.

Let's take a look at Mark 8:34, "And calling the crowd to Him with his disciples, He said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let Him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." Again. That's Mark 8:34 from the English Standard Version.

I started a leadership community a few years back. And we had this ongoing dialogue about how you could tell when you were around a leader or what were the characteristics of a leader. And one of my friends said as I'm sure you've heard before too, or maybe even you believe that a leader is someone who has followers.

I took issue with that definition. I never much liked the idea of being a follower. I didn't like the idea that for me to be a leader that would force someone else to become a follower.

If you're like me, you want to be a leader. And many of us think that follower is like the opposite of a leader, but I don't go quite that far. Still, I don't want to be someone who passively does what they're told to do. I'm not the kind of person who likes to wait around for orders. 

After that conversation was over though, because I'm a Jesus follower, I was stuck with the idea that one leader insists that I follow Him and that's Jesus. My life doesn't work unless I follow Jesus. And here Jesus, while straightening out Peter and the disciples, he makes this bold statement. We must lay aside our own desires.  We must deny ourselves and take up our cross.

We must surrender our lives to follow Jesus. This is a bold claim. And He goes on in the next few passages to talk about this some more. We may go into this another day, but this is how Follower of One got its name. You see, even to be a leader, I must follow Jesus. But it's because Jesus isn't a normal human being.

Jesus is God of the universe - become flesh. God became flesh and dwelt among us, it says in John chapter one, and we just went through that, a couple of episodes back. Jesus is the Lord of the universe. We don't get to choose that he's Lord. He is Lord. He runs things and he's telling us how the real world works.

He's telling us how the real universe works. We must give up our lives so that we can follow Him. And that's a challenge for us because we want to be our own bosses. We want to run our own show. We want to do our own thing. 

We'll talk a little bit more tomorrow about how a leader is also a follower or how a follower is also a leader. We are an online community for Jesus followers who want our faith to matter every day.

We don't think Jesus saved us to just stay out of trouble until we die. We want to take part in the work Jesus is doing in history. Care to join us, check out our online community at https://community.Followerofone.org, where you can meet other Christians who are also on this journey.

And you can join us on the next Marketplace Mission Trip. That's a two-week exercise where we practice living like a Jesus follower in today's world. Check it out by creating a profile for yourself at no charge at https://community.followerofone.org. 

Thanks very much for being a marketplace minister. And thanks for living your faith on a daily basis. Our actions matter. Thanks very much.