August 21: Insight Post by Michael Thayer
Friday Insight Post
by Michael Thayer
At this point in my life (full disclosure: I just turned 56), I need to make professional and personal decisions that will help shape my next chapter. I have several considerations, including my role and responsibilities on the home front, which have increased in recent years due to health issues in my family. As a wise former member of the small group I led years ago would say, God has been clarifying my mission field for years, making space in my life and helping me see it. God has shown, time and time again, that he’s got me. When it comes to focus and finances, His timing is always right. And in this decision about my next steps, I need to trust where He has been leading me.
Our reading for this week comes from Matthew 16:24–25 (NLT):
24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 25If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”
As Christians, who among us does not want to say that we want to be our Lord’s follower? However, when it comes to the difficult decisions, can we truly say that we deny ourselves so that we can follow where He will lead us, which frequently requires sacrifice, giving up of a dream, and/or doing things that by the standards of this world are not going to get us ahead or recognition in life? But whose definition of life am I living by, and whose recognition am I seeking in choosing to go my own way?
We can answer these questions in how we approach the decisions that we make, sometimes daily. As He prepared to die, Jesus modeled for us, literally, what it looks like to take up a heavy cross and to carry it, even though the burden was not His own, but ours. Yet throughout His life, He also showed us what cross-carrying looks like. He served Our Father through serving others and us - to the point of exhaustion. Through His actions and words, He fed the hungry in both body and spirit. He was shunned by His own people and those closest to Him. He faced injustice as He sought to carry out and make good on God’s plan for His life, and His sacrificial death that would save all of us if we believe in Him.
If He did all of that - and He did - as an unearned gift to us, as a show of gratitude, I can take up the cross in my life as opportunities to choose His way present themselves. Giving up my own way makes space for God’s way in me.
So, as I prepare to make the decision on what’s next in my professional and personal life, I pray that I will continue to seek God’s guidance, pray for Him to make my path clear, and that I remain ready to take up the cross as and when He calls me to serve. In whatever form that may take.
Michael Thayer
Leadership Team Member
New Hope Church
Lorton, Virginia
www.newhope.org