Our Ministry
The Pathway to Maturity
GOOD FRIDAY • APRIL 2
Matthew 16:24
“If any man would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me.”
I had come from a family that had higher aspirations but ended up broken with scattered and missing pieces. Alcoholism on the part of my father was a contributing factor. The result was I grew up with issues in my life that caused me to shun disappointment and suffering. Nothing but tragedy ever resulted from such things.
When I became a believer and I enjoyed fellowship and peace with God for
the first time I was ecstatic. He promised to take all the disappointments I had
ever had and by His grace, transform them into blessings. I also believed that I
would never again have to experience pain and discouragement. I was wrong.
I don’t know how long it was after becoming a believer before I experienced
a major disappointment that caused me to question God. It came in the form of a
broken relationship that would forever change the direction of my life. I could not
understand why God would permit that to happen. Hadn’t I experienced enough
in my broken family history? Worse, I doubted whether I wanted to continue to
follow the path to the ministry I felt He had called me to pursue. So I complained
and got depressed and decided God was unfair.
But God was gracious through it all and gradually opened a door for me to
find a way of escape out of my dark place of self pity. Soon enough a better
opportunity presented itself in a way I could not have expected and life got better
and so too my commitment to follow God one more time. The process repeated
itself more than a few times in my life before I began to see a pattern to my
struggles and disappointments. Somewhere behind it all, God was using things I
didn’t like to accomplish things He like: often using disappointment to change the
direction of my life, strengthen my faith and to help me to understand that discipleship
means above all else learning to obey God no matter what the cost to self.
That is, to leave my natural understandings to embrace unnatural things that mirrors
God’s way. Jesus was the true expression of God’s Way.
Jesus did not flee suffering but rather in obedience to His Father’s will, went
to the cross for us. His sufferings were the means by which our salvation was
accomplished. Isaiah says, “By his stripes we are healed.” It seems to us unnatural
that God would subject His own Son to the brutality of the cross but He did.
And He calls us to follow in the steps of Jesus.
Oh God our Father, grant us grace to deny our self interests and to take up the
cross that reflects your will for our lives. Make us useful in taking your message
of love and forgiveness to a broken world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Don Johnson
Executive Director