One of the reasons we come together as a faith community every week is not only to declare our allegiance to Christ, but to offer thanksgiving in the humility for the gift of life and everything that God has given. 

Let’s pray … Thank You, Father God, for all of these things and many more.  We offer You our thanks, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.  

I’m going to make an announcement today that I have been very reluctant to make. I knew as soon as I made it that you would hold me accountable for it; you’re going to ask me and harass me.  Around the first of January, my son, Jonathan, said, “Dad, will you run a half marathon with me in Indianapolis on May 8?”  I said yes.  Now for some of you this is no big deal; we have 73-year-old women in this church who run a marathon before breakfast.  But for me, this is a big deal because a half marathon, 13.1 miles, is not something that you can show up and do; it’s all of the painful daily roadwork leading up to the event.  Now, there has been toxic thinking in the church of Jesus Christ, and I mean globally – the whole church of Jesus Christ – that somehow you can be a Christian without being a disciple. Or, you can believe in Jesus without following him.  In many, many instances in the scripture, Jesus tells us to calculate the cost before we ever start this journey, because he said if you start this journey and you’re not able to finish this journey, you will bring great embarrassment to the Father’s name.  So again and again, we see Jesus warn us that following him is difficult; it will be exhausting, time-consuming, and require strenuous effort.  Now, how many in here have ever started a project that you have never finished?  You think you can do it, you get into it, and you find out about all the time involved, or that you’re way in over your head, so you quit.  Jesus warns us, “Don’t start this journey following me if you can’t finish it.” 

Open your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark 8:34.  This is one of the classical passages that is studied during the Lenten season, the 40 days leading up to Easter.    Then Jesus called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life, live it for themselves, will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and the Gospel, will save it.  For what good is it if you gain the whole world yet forfeit your soul or what can you give in exchange for your soul?  If any of you are ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in the Father’s glory with the holy angels.” 

Well, Wednesday our worship team was sitting around, and we were discussing this passage together. I jumped immediately to the cross, what it means to take up the cross, because the cross for Jesus was not a symbol; it was an instrument of execution.  And so what Jesus was laying out there is that if you truly are following me, you’re going to be in tension with the powers that be.  So, it could quite possibly mean your physical death for following Jesus. 

Three of us on the worship team have been to Darfur. We were talking about how you deal with the possibility of death ahead of time and how we all have “last rites” before we go.  By that I mean you say the things that you want to say to your family and you deal with your own possible death.  You don’t go to a war zone without doing that.  So, Dave Hood, who has not been to Darfur, chimed in, “Wait a minute; hold on here.”  He said, “I’m willing to go Darfur in a second, even though I’ve got young kids at home.”  He said, “But here’s my problem – I’ll go to Darfur, but I can’t pass a Burger King without stopping.”  And it was like a revelation to me.  It was like, whoa!  See, the hard thing is not dying for Jesus.  I really believe 50% of people in this room right now would say, hey it would be painful, but I’m willing to die for Jesus; that’s an eternal kind of thing. But the hard thing is to successfully live for Jesus!  Am I talking to the right people?  So how do you bring together the “want to” of our commitments with the daily hard “work to” of being a disciple of Jesus Christ? 

 Well, there are certain elements we see in Lenten kinds of passages.  Here’s the first:  You have to verbally declare your commitment.  Part of the toxic teaching in the church is that people say, “Well, my faith is personal and private.”  No, it is not!  You’ve got to speak it out loud.  I knew for a couple months that this race deal would be a good illustration, but I said I’m not going to use it.  Because as soon as I declared it out loud, what happened? I’m committed!  You’re going to hold me accountable.  What you speak from your mouth really reveals the commitments of your heart.  See, you can’t separate your mouth from the core values of your heart.  Here’s what is says in Romans 10:9:  “If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  Now, that Greek word “saved” means complete wellness in every dimension of your life.  It’s not just eternity for heaven.  It means wellness in your eating, it means in your finances. If you name and declare the commitments, you’re expressing the core value of your heart.  Now, why do you think I stood up here and said what I didn’t want to say? Can anybody guess what my motive is?  The love of my son.  I’m going to be 59 this summer, so how many seasons do I have left to run 13.1 miles with my son?  So I love my son enough that I’m willing to blow out my knees.  Is that bizarre to you?  Now translate that into discipleship; this is literally what Jesus is saying, where he says, “If any of you are ashamed of me….”  The better translation of that is “if you love anything else more, including your knees….” There are some hard passages in scripture where Jesus says stuff like, “If anyone wants to come after me and does not leave their mother, father, brother, sister, husband, wife, daughter, or son, they cannot be my disciple.”  Here is what Jesus is saying:  Mike, if you’re willing to do that hard daily roadwork to run 13.1 miles for your son, how much more should you be willing to do for me?  So, you see, when you speak it out loud, you’re making the commitment that is really revealing the core value of your heart.  Do you know our words have power?  The words you speak will become the physical reality that you live.  Read the first verse of the Gospel of John:  “In the beginning was the Word” right?  Nothing physical…it was the Word.  Go back to Genesis.  God spoke a word and that word became the physical reality.  In the beginning, God said "Let there be light," and there was the physical reality of light.   God spoke and said “Let there be sun, moon, stars…” there were sun, moon, and stars.  God spoke and said “Let there be earth, land; let the earth be separated from water” and it was!   Now, go back to the Gospel of John…”In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.”  Faith is not personal or private!  The words you speak become the physical reality that you live. 

 We just had a Board meeting Tuesday night and it was so exciting.  We cut a check for $670,000 to continue our work in Darfur this year.  In this economy, that’s exciting.  And what even excites me more is that Ginghamsburg lives on the edge.  We only have three weeks of reserve in the bank.  There is a little over $300,000 in our account. There is no other church this size in America who has that low of a balance in their account.  Yet with only three weeks of reserve, we just cut a check for $670,000 for Darfur.  Last month, we cut a check for $80,000 for Haiti.  There is going to be another offering coming up for Haiti.  Do you think that stuff makes God smile?  But when you think of what created this physical reality that is now touching over 200,000 lives – 172 schools, and our agricultural program sustaining 83,000 people – it started with two sentences in 2004:  “Christmas is not your birthday” and, “sustainable agriculture project.”  Four months later, 5,209 families had seed in the ground seven times zones away.  You see, the words we speak, and the commitments we make with our mouths become the physical realities that we live.  Now, folks, if we are going to bring the “work to” to the hard roadwork of discipleship with the “want to” not only do we have to declare our commitment, we have to practice self denial.

 Jesus said if anyone wants to come after me the first they have to do is deny themselves.   Now, the Greek word for “deny” is literally “just say no.”  Just say no to self.  This is so hard to do because you and I have been entrenched in this culture of commercial consumerism, and we have been brainwashed to think the road to happiness is found in self-focus.  All you have to do is look at the media clips and advertisements for seminars or go into any bookstore and look at how everything is about self focus.  Here are a few:  Finding self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self- gratification, self-empowerment, and self-enlightenment; do I need to go on?  That’s what Jesus means when he says “when you love your life, you will lose your soul.” And that is why we have to learn to keep saying no to self to find true life.  It is only through self-denial you will find true life. 

Fasting is one of the most important disciplines the Bible teaches.  We are in a season of fasting.  And fasting is disciplines or practices to learn to say no to self.  Now, you don’t always say no to self forever, but you’ve got to learn to say no to the things that can be distractions or substitutes.  A lot of times when Jesus sent disciples out on training missions, he was very focused on giving them a specific practice of discipline – fasting - or what not to take.  In Luke 9, he said:  “Take nothing for the journey, no staff…” (Well, darn it; they are the ones who do all the work around here!)  What is a staff?  It is something that you lean on, right?  It can become a distraction or a substitute.  And it’s not that you will never use a staff but it’s there have to be seasons in your life where you practice this self-discipline.  “Take no bag and no bread.”  How many times does food become a substitute?  So there are just times we have to practice that form of self-denial.  Jesus may say, “No money.”  Well, you can’t live forever without money.  Many times during the Lenten season, I do no consumer shopping, except for food.  If we don’t learn to deny ourselves, money, it so often becomes a distraction because of our desire to accumulate material things, and it creates debt.  Distractions and substitutes are always going to come at us from three fronts, and they are the same temptations that came to Jesus during his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness.  Do you know why there are 40 days of fasting preceding Easter?  It corresponds to Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the desert. 

 Here are the three areas we are always going to confront:  The desire to ingest, which is about appetites and passions; which is to accumulate material things; and the desire to impress, which is worldly ambitions.  Now, one of the important areas that Jesus tells us to fast in, is premarital sex.  How many single folks in the house?  Now, here’s why – healthy relationships are not held together by sex. I’ve been married 38 years so I can say this.  How many of you have been married more than 10 years?  How many you have been married more then 20 years?  Would you agree with me that healthy relationships are not held together by sex?  Relationships are hard, and anybody that is in any kind of healthy relationship understands that a healthy relationship, day in and day out, is based on self-denial and self-sacrifice.  When we fail to fast from premarital sex, then we begin to confuse relationships based in self-gratification with those based in self-denial and self-sacrifice. Then we get married, and we constantly go head-to-head because every dimension of our relationship is based in self-gratification instead of self-denial and self-sacrifice.  God doesn’t lay this self-discipline and denial on us to frustrate us but to protect us.  He says anytime it is about self-gratification, you’re going to lose your soul - the core of who you are.  You’re never going to live a true life.  But if you practice this hard, painful roadwork, you’re going to discover true life. 

 Well, sisters and brothers, not only do we need to bring the “work to” to the “want to” in this daily roadwork of following Jesus, we also have to declare our allegiance and name our commitment. We have to practice self-denial and commit to self-discipline.  Discipline is a daily program.  It is a physical program that you put in place to achieve your objective.  I am going to say that again:  Discipline is a daily physical program you put in place to achieve your objective. There are three critical elements to discipline:

 1) You have to have a clear picture of what it is that you want to achieve in your life, whether it’s financially, with eating, relationally, or spiritually. 

2) You have to have a plan to accomplish that picture.

3) You have to have a persistent daily practice to accomplish your plan.

Picture, Plan, and Practice.  Let’s just compare it in a simple way to my race, okay?  What is your goal?  What is the picture?  It is a 13.1 mile race in Indianapolis on May 8 – would you call that a clear picture?  Okay, what is my plan to achieve that picture?  Let’s take a look at my 12-week plan. I’m in my 6^th week of this 12-week plan.  I have a very specific plan.  You have to do this in every area of your life; this is what discipline is all about.  This week my daily practice began with an 80-minute run on Monday, which was 7+ miles. I work on my chest and back opposite days, while other days are strength exercises.  However, this week, I ran 3.6 miles with my son and daughter-in-law Tuesday night, did strength training on Wednesday, ran 4.4 miles with my son on Thursday night, did more strength training on Friday, and ran 5.5 miles, from Taylorsville Dam to Old Springfield Road and back yesterday. And today is my day of rest!  So what I’m going to do is increase my runs a mile per week.

You can’t separate faith and discipline.  Please hear me.  You cannot separate faith from discipline.  Faith is more than turning your struggle over to Jesus.  How many of us in this room, whatever your struggle – financial, health, eating, whatever – keep saying, “Jesus, help me; Jesus, help me; Jesus, help me?” It’s more than just asking.  It is the commitment to act on Jesus’ summons:  “If anyone comes after me…”  See, salvation is not an event.  Too many of us, say a prayer while we play “Just as I am” and that’s the total sum of our salvation.  Salvation is a journey.  The apostle Paul put it this way. He said, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.”  So I work out, and God works in.  You cannot separate faith and discipline.  Look at all of the illustrations the New Testament uses to support the daily roadwork of discipleship and athletic events.  There are constant comparisons.  Paul said, “I beat my body and make it my slave.”  What Paul is talking about is the necessary pain that comes with the achievement of serious gain.  You cannot separate faith from discipline.  He uses a boxer illustration, and he says, “I don’t box aimlessly as one beating the air.”  Think about a boxer for a minute.  Let’s use that analogy for discipleship.  For a boxer, the victory is not the win; that’s the outcome.  The victory is in the training.  It’s not the win but the training.  And there is a lot of pain in training.  I’m discovering that while preparing for this race.  I mean, I got out of bed this morning, and I felt like my legs were drunk.  I felt like I needed an IV of coffee for my legs to make them work.  There’s a lot of pain in the journey and the training, but there is also joy. 

My son is a year away from graduating medical school right now, and he is doing all of his rotations. Like today down at the hospital, he is in a psychiatry round.  So he is really busy; he is taking this thing seriously.  Next year, when he graduates, he could go anywhere in the country for his residency.  He has no idea where he is going to be next year, so I’ve only got him for about another 12 months.  Carolyn and I see him in worship, and we try to take him and his wife out for dinner afterwards. What is amazing is now that I’m running this race with him is he will text me and say:  “Dad, 5:30; Dad, 5:30.”  He knows it is easier to run with somebody than by yourself.  So Thursday night, I’m running beside my son down next to the Miami River and my knees began to hurt.  But I’m thinking, “I’m running with my son!”  And I’m not so anxious for May 8 to get here, because when May 8 gets here, he is not going to have any excuse for texting me.  So, folks, there is joy in the journey.  There is pain in the journey, but there is joy in the journey. 

Sometimes I get so frustrated because I really wonder - as I look around the church and as I travel - how many people are really serious about doing the Jesus thing.  Because in America, we bring politics into this Jesus thing, and we can get crazy.  I see one of my Palestinian brothers out there.  And, you know, we can get caught up in American politics sometimes and we always take Israel’s side. Sometimes we don’t even see what else is going on. I was in Israel when the government tore down 1,500 Palestinian homes.  Some of those homes had been there for three generations.  A lot of those people are Christians. Am I the only who says – show me some other real Jesus followers?  We demonize people whom we disagree with. We’re Jesus followers; we’re not supposed to demonize; we’re suppose to love.  Can’t we debate without demonizing others, sisters and brothers?  Sometimes when I feel lonely, I wonder if there are four or five other Christians out there who really want to demonstrate Jesus’ love for the world. It’s a painful journey.  But then I remember I’m running with Jesus!  I’m working for Jesus!  I’m living for Jesus! 

You know, we’ve got to be careful here because there is a real danger that we look at these teachings and begin to use Jesus just as another diet plan or a business investor.  And, you see, it’s not about you.  It’s not about me.  The reason the world is not taking the church seriously right now is because they look at us and don’t see anything different.  Do you know the divorce rate in the church equals that of general society right now?  People look at us, and they don’t see how the Gospel works.  Do you know why I work so hard at things, like eating and exercise? Because I want the world to look and see how the Gospel works in my life.  The world looks at us and sees we have exactly the same problems they have.  You see, you become contagious, sisters and brothers, when other people look at you and see how the Gospel makes a difference.  This is why Jesus tells us, “Calculate the cost.”  Don’t start this journey if you can’t do what it takes to finish this journey, because you will bring great embarrassment to the Father’s name. Bring together the “want to” of your commitments with the daily hard “work to” of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Picture. Plan. Practice.  Amen.