Dear Church Family,

I’m so thankful we were able to provide online worship in the midst of the storm. Paul expressed that he wished to be with his recipients in person rather than writing them in Galatians 4.20. When we are online only, I feel his heart in the desire to be in koinonia with one another.  Thank you to our tech and worship team for making online even a possibility and to our facilities crew for getting our water back. Before I share this amazing devotional by Chad Bird, I have to share my reminder again not to pay attention to emails and texts supposedly from me asking for gift cards. Years ago my contacts were stolen and they continue to send out these bogus pleas.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

The cross is designed to do one main thing: to kill you.
An uncrucified disciple is a contradiction in terms.

I first heard Bonhoeffer’s words as a student. They set my heart on fire. I was ready to give everything for Jesus. Show me the cross, I thought, and I would bare my hands and feet for the nails. I would work, suffer, even bleed if necessary.

What I would never do was turn my back on my Savior. And I could not understand how other Christians seemed so compromised, so worldly, so indulgent.

Unlike them, I believed I had truly died. I was a *real* Christian.

What I did not yet see was that I was also profoundly deceived. I was praying the Pharisee’s prayer without realizing it: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” Beneath my zeal was a growing spiritual arrogance that would one day expose me.

What I had not yet learned is that the death Christ requires is not a single heroic moment, but a daily, ongoing death.

Becoming a disciple does not cause our sinful instincts to vanish overnight. Even as a believer, my heart continued to produce false trusts and false gods.

I went to church faithfully, but I pocketed idols along the way.

Scripture shows that this is nothing new. Rachel did it when she fled with Jacob, stealing her father’s household gods. Israel did it leaving Egypt and entering Canaan.

Again and again, God’s people tried to hold onto Yahweh and something else. Yahweh and security. Yahweh and power. Yahweh and success. This “Yahweh-and-ism” whispers the lie that God alone is not enough.

For this reason, Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples to watch, to stay awake, to beware. In other words, check your pockets for idols. They will always need emptying.

So what is the Christian life? Lifelong repentance, a daily dying. But it is a sweet death, because dying to self is life in Jesus, the destroyer of our idols and the forgiver of our sins.

Press On!

Mark