Opening Prayer: Jesus please take my lips and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for yourself. Amen

Are there people within the Bible you can relate to? Peter is one of those for me……

In the gospel reading, Peter is (in his own way) is trying to protect Jesus but Jesus didn’t want or need that. As we heard last week, only a few verses before, Peter told Jesus he believes Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God but a few verses later Peter blunders in with both feet!

Peter doesn’t always get things right but God still used Peter to build His church.

Personally I find that very reassuring – despite growing up in a Christian family I drifted a long way from God in my mid-late teens through to my late twenties. Like Peter I had set my mind on human things not divine things.

Through my parents faithful prayers, God brought me back to Him following fertility treatment and a miscarriage. The Sunday after I had miscarried, I woke up with a sense I just had to go to church that morning and I needed my husband (who had no faith and a very limited Christian background) to go with me.

Although we didn’t realise it at the time, God met us that morning and we found ourselves going back the following Sunday, and then the next and the next. Jesus seemed so real to the people there, that we started asking questions, attended an Alpha course (which explained the basics of Christianity and where no questions were off limits) and eventually (in our own timing) made personal commitments to Jesus. That was over 20 years ago now and I can genuinely say I really don’t know how I would have got through some of the challenges life has thrown at me since then without a personal relationship with Jesus.

I find it really reassuring that someone like Peter, who Jesus called a ‘rock’ and God used to build His church, made mistakes and didn’t always get it right! There is hope for me too!
Lets dig in to the passage a bit more. In v24, Jesus goes on to say ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ But what does He mean by this and how does it relate to us today? Lets break the statement into 3 parts:

Deny yourself – denying ourselves goes against everything the world says.
A person doesn’t naturally want to deny themselves anything. That’s why personally going on a diet is so difficult for me. I love food. It’s also why I also find it difficult not to be distracted by apps/news each morning on my phone before I’ve spent time with God.
We often think we know what is best for us, and the direction we want our lives to go in. But what Jesus is challenging us to do in this passage is to allow Him to drive our lives in the direction He wants us to go. That’s what denying ourselves means. It means we let go of our ambitions, put Christ first and trust that God knows best.

I have found this a really difficult thing to do – about 15 years ago I first felt God calling me to step out for Him. Then a couple of years later I sensed God was calling me to stop my secular work in HR/Project management but I just couldn’t see how I could do that. We had 3 young children at the time – how would we manage financially? Why? How could I explain what I sensed God telling me to do? It was only when I became unwell with a chronic condition and nearly a year later was still nowhere nearly well enough to return to work, that my husband and I started praying together, and ultimately made the incredibly difficult decision for me to leave work through voluntary redundancy.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is incredibly important for Christians to work in the secular world but for us as a family, leaving paid work was absolutely the right thing for me to do from 2 perspectives:
Firstly through my own health issues I had some incredible times with God when I was resting/trying to recover but
secondly, as a family we have faced some difficult challenges over the last 6 years and if I had been trying to juggle paid work, it would have been even more difficult. Thankfully God provided and we did manage financially too but we wanted to be in control, and didn’t want to give it to God.

Just to clarify too – Jesus telling us to deny ourselves doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy life anymore, nor does it mean we must follow a bunch of manmade rules and regulations. It means we’re continually trying to live our lives for Christ, instead of living our lives for ourselves.
2. Take Up our cross
In Jesus’ time, a cross was not a piece of jewellery (like lots of people wear today); it was an instrument of painful execution. Everyone who saw a person carrying a cross knew they were walking to their death with no way back. Just as we are to continue to deny ourselves throughout our Christian lives, we must also continually take up our cross.

It’s about choosing every morning to obey God’s voice instead of our own feelings or worldly temptations.
Carrying our cross daily means we trust in God regardless of what’s happening in our lives daily.
It’s about loving Jesus regardless of what our friends or ‘the world’ thinks.
Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean our lives will be nothing but one blessing after another, nor does it mean our life will be free from difficulties. What it does mean is that Jesus promises us that when times get tough, He will take us by our hand and walk through those dark times with us. He loves us and is always with us.

3. Jesus says ‘Follow Me’
2000 years ago when Jesus said follow me to his disciples, He literally meant give up your livelihood, your friends and family and follow wherever I may lead you. Certainly in this country, there are very few people Jesus is saying that to these days, although there are some incredible testimonies from other people around the world who Jesus has said this too.

What I think Jesus is meaning with this is give your life to me, match your actions to my actions, live every day obeying my teachings, love as I love and treat others as I treated people. Let people see Me through how you live your life.

Jesus words ‘Follow Me’ have led me on a long wrestle with God. I have felt God calling me to ordained ministry for a long time but kept coming up with arguments and reasons why God couldn’t possibly be calling me to that!
I connect with God a lot through worship music and especially remember singing ‘I the Lord of sea and sky (which we have just sung/are about to sing) on a couple of occasions, my heart started pounding and I just knew God was calling me to step out for Him.
The final push for me to actually explore ordination was when God spoke to me through a dream (which is incredibly rare for me)!
I reluctantly stepped out, expecting to be rejected at each stage of the process and it never happened.
But for me, the most amazing thing is I am absolutely loving what I am doing here with you all! Thank you for making me feel so welcome!

So what does Jesus mean when he asks you to Follow Him?
Do you know Jesus as your personal lord and saviour? If you don’t, please speak to any of the clergy here today – we would love to share more with you.

As I draw this to a close, Jesus said: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
What does this mean for you?
When Jesus died on the cross, He did so, so our sins could be forgiven. Is there anything stopping you from growing closer to Him?

Finally, giving our all to God doesn’t mean we are trapped but that we have the ultimate freedom from sin and death. God loves you so much He wants you to spend eternity with Him.

Readings: Jeremiah 15.15–21; Psalm 26.1–8; Romans 12.9–end; Matthew 16.21–end

Preacher: Rev’d Carol Tarver

Location: St John’s Church Peterborough UK