8/16/2011

When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” Mark 8:34

Here we see Jesus gathers everyone together, gets their attention, and provides them instruction. I noticed that before Jesus gave any instruction he first told them that they need to first long for Him. He commands them to deny themselves and become a bondservant, to choose him over their desires, wishes, needs, and people in their life to follow Jesus. Webster’s dictionary defines deny as (to refuse to recognize or acknowledge). When I am denying myself I am not even to acknowledge the things of myself but to solely follow Jesus.

I am reminded of the game “follow the leader”. In this game, everyone’s eyes are looking towards the person in front of them. The followers have no preconceived ideas about where they are to go but only what the leader is doing. It made me question, “Do I have that same undistracted attention on Jesus, my leader or am I thinking about the next move I want to make?”

To apply this to my life, I want to keep my eyes on Jesus, my leader, to see what step He is going to make for me to follow instead of planning for the next step I think He should make.