The Faith Walk

Guest (Male): Today on The Faith Walk with Jonathan Evans.

Jonathan Evans: Today I want to talk to you from the title, "Make a Wish." At the end of a birthday party when they say make a wish, you just close your eyes. You may not even make a wish, or you make a wish you know is not going to come true. It's a formality that you know won't become a reality and everybody just moves on.

Every Sunday we do the same thing. Everybody comes into church and they have a party and most who gather wish to be like Jesus. The flame is lit in church when the party is taking place, but by the time we hit the parking lot, that thing gets blown out and everybody forgot the point. Today we need to make a formality a reality.

Guest (Male): You ever wonder what you should do first to move the spiritual needle forward? Or do you ever ask yourself, how can I live the Christian life consistently every day? Well, let's find out through Jonathan's multi-part series, Discipleship for Everyday.

But before we begin, if you want to know more about Jonathan and the Alternative, visit tonyevans.org. Now, here's Jonathan Evans.

Jonathan Evans: Let's open our Bibles to Matthew 16:24-27. This is what the word says, "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels and will then repay every man according to his deeds.'"

Today I want to talk to you from the title, "Make a Wish." Every Sunday all around the world people show up to church to have a party. It's a formality really, because at the end of a birthday party when they say make a wish, you just close your eyes. You may not even make a wish or you make a wish you know is not going to come true. It's a formality that you know won't become a reality and everybody just moves on.

Every Sunday we do the same thing. Everybody comes into the church and they have a party and most who gather wish to be like Jesus. The flame is lit in church when the party is taking place, but by the time we hit the parking lot, that thing gets blown out and everybody forgot the point. Today we need to make a formality a reality.

I want to read this again because I want you to hear it. Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and turn around and lose his soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of the Father with His angels and will repay every man according to his deeds."

There's a wish that we have and that most people have, and they wish to follow Jesus. Here He's about to give you the details of what it takes to make the wish come true. But before we get into verses 24 through 27, I have to show you a conversation that took place in verses 21 through 23. I've got to go back up a little bit because before Jesus says this, He has an interesting conversation with Peter.

Peter's the one who said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Then right after that in verse 21 it says, "From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and be raised on the third day." In verse 22, Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You."

But He turned to Peter and said, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interest, but man's." Jesus is telling His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die and be raised. Peter comes to Jesus thinking about his interest, and he says, "I forbid it, Lord. This shall never happen to You. You shall not die. I want You to be okay. I want You to be safe. I want You to be comfortable. I want You to feel okay in this season. I don't want these things to happen to You. I'm just looking out for Your best interest."

Jesus looks at Peter and says, "Get behind Me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to Me because you're not focused on God's interest, you're focused on man's interest." If I was Peter I'd be like, "You're going to call me the devil? I'm looking out for You. How are you going to call me Satan? How are you going to put that on me?" Peter didn't realize he sounded just like him.

Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, he had Eve and Adam thinking about their own interest. You'll be like God, you'll be wise, you'll be okay, you'll know the difference between good and evil, you'll be in a good space if you don't do what God says. Jesus recognized that in Peter's trying to make Him feel okayness was disobedience to God. He was actually giving Him the doctrine of the devil.

Let me make you feel good, let me make you go after your self-interest so that you won't do God's interest. I want you to think about yourself, Jesus, so you don't do what the Bible calls you to do. I want yourself to be the focus because if yourself is the focus, then I can eliminate what God wants to do through you to impact other people. Why would I want to suffer to impact the life of somebody else? I don't want to do that.

Here Peter's called the devil and he's called Satan because Jesus recognizes what he is called to do in what Peter is saying. Jesus knows what the Bible and the scripture says about Him. Isaiah 53:5 says, "I must be wounded for your transgressions. I must be bruised for your iniquities. The chastisement of your peace is upon Me. By My stripes you're healed." You're telling me to go for comfort not realizing if I don't suffer you won't even be saved.

Jesus understands Isaiah 53:10 where the Lord says, "I was pleased to crush Him and make Him a guilt offering so that His sons and daughters, His offspring, their days will be prolonged." Jesus is saying, "Peter, you're trying to get me to look out for my self-interest and that's going to destroy God's interest, which is going to destroy you and everyone who comes after you." I can't just think about myself because if I think about myself, you die, he dies, she dies, she dies. A whole lot of people die if I don't die.

Jesus understands that His calling of suffering is necessary for our salvation. He's not focused on His self-interest the way the enemy through Peter is trying to get Him to focus. In Psalm 118:22 it says, "The stone must be rejected to become the chief cornerstone." Jesus knows this. He knows He must go through a season of rejection in order to become the chief cornerstone, but Peter's worried about Him feeling okay.

Mark 10:45 says, "I have not come to be served, but to serve and to give My life away as a ransom for the many." So if there's anyone here who wants to be like Jesus... what's another one? Philippians 2 says, "He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of men, humbling Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross." So if there's anyone here who wants to be like Jesus...

Luke 22:42, He's in the Garden of Gethsemane, He has sweat dropping from His brow like drops of blood because of the anxiety of the suffering that is ahead, and He has this moment where He says, "Lord, if You are willing, I don't want to do this. Let this cup pass from Me. But not My will be done, Your will be done. Even at the cost of My suffering." So if there's anyone who really wants to be like Jesus...

Jesus understood that when God calls, just because there's suffering attached to it doesn't mean all of a sudden God didn't call. He's going to suffer because God's word says so. He's denying the word that tries to make him feel comfortable that gets him to avoid what he's called to do, which is the cross, which is for you and me.

Guest (Male): Jonathan will return with more of our message in just a moment. Did you know that God has a purpose for you right now? You may think you're not ready to make a difference in God's kingdom or that you're too young for others to take seriously, but that's not what God thinks.

We want to give you a book by Jonathan called "Your Time Is Now." This book is our gift to you as a thanks for your donation to help support the ministry of The Alternative. It's our way of showing appreciation for the continued support of listeners like you who make this program possible. Get all the details online at tonyevans.org.

Again, that's tonyevans.org or you can call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. Find your way out of distractions and into God's purpose for your life. Now, let's get back to Jonathan with the rest of today's message.

Jonathan Evans: He's denying the word that tries to make him feel comfortable that gets him to avoid what he's called to do, which is the cross, which is for you and me. Because when you go for your self-interest, you leave a lot of people out even though you feel good.

People do this, this is what people do: "I just feel called away from my job that I'm at now. I feel like the Lord is leading me to a different place." You get to the different place, you don't like your boss, your coworkers are getting on your nerve, it seems like all hell is breaking loose, you didn't make as much money as you thought, you don't like HR, they ain't treating you right, they didn't give you the little thing that you needed to understand how to do your job. It's been hectic ever since you showed up.

Immediately you think to yourself, "This can't be what God said, I must have made that up." Because God only calls us as Christians and if God calls us, it's going to feel good to us. But if it feels bad to us, it can't be God. I know I just went over a lot of scriptures that told Jesus His calling is suffering, and when He suffers it's going to be for the benefit of the whole world, especially those who believe.

If we're like Jesus, we can't assume that just because it doesn't go well when God calls me, doesn't mean God didn't call me. Maybe He wanted you to suffer because there's somebody there that's not saved. Maybe He wanted you to go through that problem because there's somebody there that needs to meet Jesus. Maybe it's not about you.

Maybe He wanted you in that place because what's the point of having warriors if there's no battle anywhere? We got to stop thinking if it's not good, then God couldn't be a part of it. God will send you in there and let you experience some hardships because number one He wants you to depend on Him, but number two He wants you to impact others. Maybe that crazy boss needs a Christian there.

Jesus said, "Peter, get thee behind Me, Satan." A lot of us as Christians are living under the doctrine of demons. Feel good and that's your spot. If you don't feel good, go find another spot that helps you feel good, so you're just chasing after happiness, which is like trying to tackle Barry Sanders. You can't catch that dude.

We're running around in circles like a dog chasing our tails. A lot of moving but we ain't going nowhere because we're trying to run from the very thing that God is calling us to do because He's calling you to be on you. So if anyone wishes to come after Jesus... that's why that candle gets blown out so quick.

Now that we've cleared that up, how many of us still want to wish to follow Jesus? Sounds good in the party. Had a few folks with alligator arms. That dude over there 6'4", looks like a T-Rex. Because really we have a lot of wishes. We wish to have happy marriages, we wish to be able to have more devotion, we wish to be able to have better time management, we wish to be able to lose weight and be in shape. We wish, we wish, we wish.

Wishes don't come true just because you wish them. Wishes come true because you persist them. Persistence is the ability to go despite obstacles, opposition, and trials or even failure, that I'm going to continue to persist the wish. That's the only way the wish comes true and a lot of Christians will not persist this wish once they realize that flesh and faith can't play on the same team. Once I realize I can't be me, we're blowing that thing out.

You wish for a happy marriage until it makes you realize you have to serve and sacrifice. You wish for more devotion until you realize you have to put that addiction called your cellphone down and actually spend time in God's word. You wish for more time management until you realize that means you have to consistently manage your time. You wish to lose weight, but you realize you can't go to the fair. You've got to eat right, you've got to work out when you don't want to.

We got a lot of wishes until we realize I have to participate. But if there's anyone here who still has the wish, He says, "You must deny yourself." Must means must. I don't have those Tony Evans definitions, he gives you good definitions. I use the word in the definition. My definitions are wack but you get it.

Must means you ain't got no choice. That's what it means. It means you have to do this in order to get that. That's what must is. Wishes inadvertently leave out the gory details of the must. People have a wish till they run into something the wish didn't tell them.

Like Joseph had a dream but it left out everything. You're going to get stripped, you're going to get thrown into a pit, they're going to sell you into slavery, you're going to get lied on, you're going to go to prison, you're going to do nice things in prison but then somebody's going to leave, they're going to forget you're in there. A lot of times God will leave that out because if He showed you, you wouldn't go. "I'm not doing that."

But as it relates to this, He says, "No, no, no, I want My people to have the right expectations of the wish to come after Jesus." So I'm going to give you the details of what it takes to be a visible, verbal disciple of Jesus Christ. It is not a party. He says you must deny yourself. Not self-promote yourself, not self-sustain yourself, not self-manifest your dream, self-happiness. He ain't talking about none of that. Don't apologize for yourself.

I don't really like it when people say, "Don't apologize for yourself," because that's kind of how you get saved. You kind of have to apologize for yourself. Unless of course you're living the Christian life and your mama told you don't apologize for the Christian life. But most people just "be you, don't apologize for yourself." Don't keep telling people that because they're going to wake up in eternity a little warm.

It's called repentance where you apologize for yourself and you go to Jesus. This is my life? No, it's not. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Those who are in Christ are a new creature. The old is gone and the new has come." So when He says deny yourself, let me say it a different way, He's saying deny your old self. Don't go back to your old self that you were before you met Me. I need you to deny your old self.

What people may be thinking is if it's gone, if it's done away with, if I'm a new creature, why do I still have the old feelings and desires that I had before I met Christ? Because you're saved, you've been made alive in the spirit, but your salvation still resides in the same body. So you still have the desires of the old self because of the house that the new self is residing in, which is why that body has to be done away with and be put to sleep and you get a new body in heaven.

You're still having these old desires even though you have a new spirit because it resides in the old self, like a new engine in an old car. You've got to understand that. Let me explain it this way: when I was in my backyard one day, I saw a snake and I said, "Ah!" Then I saw my wife and I was like, "Oh, I'm going to handle this, I got you, it ain't nothing." Perpetrating. I didn't know she was there.

So I nervously got a knife, went boom, chopped his head off. I know it's a little graphic but that's what I did. After I chopped his head off, his body was crumping. I was like, "How in the world is he still moving and dead?" Well, I found out that he was having a postmortem reflex or what they call a cadaveric spasm.

In other words, it happened so fast that his nerves from the old were still firing even though there's been a transition. It doesn't mean that there's life, it just means that there's a spasm from the old life even though there's no vitals or no consciousness. There's no life there, so I didn't attribute life to it. It was just moving but it wasn't alive.

A lot of us are having postmortem reflexes, you're having cadaveric spasms in the old life and you think there's life over there. There is no life over there, it's just the nerves that are still firing because that transition happened so fast when you met Christ. What you can't do is attribute life to a cadaveric spasm or postmortem reflex or you'll be dancing in the cemetery. There are no vital signs there, there is no consciousness there, so you're wasting your life trying to pick that back up. It's not alive, it's dead, it's just spasming.

So He says deny what's dead, that spasm that still is having a reflex from the old self. But do not attribute life to it. Don't spend energy there, don't give to it because just because you feel it and those old nerves are firing doesn't mean it's alive. It's dead.

Guest (Male): That was Jonathan Evans. Before you go today, I want to remind you that we have a gift for you. It's a copy of Jonathan's book called "Your Time Is Now." In this book, you'll understand that God has a purpose for you even if you think you're not ready to make a difference.

Move beyond inaction and embrace the calling God has placed on your life. The book "Your Time Is Now" is our gift to you to thank you for your donation to help support the ministry of The Alternative. It's our way of showing appreciation for the continued support of listeners like you who make this program possible. Get all the details online at tonyevans.org.

Again, that's tonyevans.org or you can call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. Find your way out of distractions and into God's purpose for your life. Thank you for listening to today's program with Jonathan Evans. This program is produced as a part of The Urban Alternative, a ministry of Dr. Tony Evans.