The Scalding Road

In Matthew's Gospel in chapter 16 and in verses 24 through 25, we read the words of Christ Jesus. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

The message of the cross in the life of a believer is practically unknown in America today. Most preachers tell you today to come to Christ and he will take all the bumps out of your road, but that's not so. There is no easy way with God, friends.

God didn't take an easy path to reconcile sinners back to him. He did it through the suffering and spent blood of his beloved son who died on a scandalous cross so we could live. Christ, in his earthly ministry, didn't have a feathery pillow to lay his head upon, even though foxes had their holes and birds their nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head.

The road to discipleship is fraught with stones and rugged hills and swamps and valleys and heartaches and hardships. Did not the apostle Paul say this to his disciple Timothy, Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet he is not crowned except he strive lawfully.

But we don't like that. We don't want hardness. We want the soft, easy, quick way to being a better Christian.

We want to win, but we don't want to play by the rules. We want to bend the rules to our advantage and favor. My last sermon message I preached to you friends was entitled Johnston's Golden Nuggets of Pain, and I prefaced my message saying I had learned a few things about God and the Christian life, and these were golden nuggets of truth, but first I had to go to hell and back, so to speak, to get them.

That's why I labeled them golden nuggets of pain. Now, folks want my golden nuggets, but they don't want the pain. I remember Leonard Ravenhill saying something like this about a year before he died.

He said, Everybody wants my mantle, but no one wants my sackcloth and ashes. And it's true, friends. We want the easy way to victory with Christ and usefulness to him, but there is no easy way.

My good friend William McDonald wrote about the life of discipleship in these terms. He said, We often think that it must have been a wonderful experience to travel with Jesus when he was here on earth. We can see him and his disciples sauntering along enjoying a continual Bible conference, but it wasn't like that.

It was more of a scalding experience in which the disciples learned their own sinfulness and failure, and in which they were called to a pathway of persecution, suffering, and death. Like I said, folks want my golden nuggets, but they don't want the pain that it took for me to obtain them. The road to discipleship is costly.

It costs the Savior his blood. If we are to follow a crucified Christ, should we not live crucified lives where we are dead to the world, self and sin? I was reading the diaries of John Song, who burned out for Christ in the gospel at the age of forty-two, and who shook China for God in his generation in such powerful revivals that it almost turned that country Christian. He suffered greatly all his life with bleeding piles.

He had to wash the pus and blood out of his undergarments every day after preaching all day. At times his pain was so bad he had a preach line on his side. Eventually his condition turned to cancer.

His daughter Levi had this to say of him right before he died. John read eleven chapters of the Bible every day. He would kneel and pray every night, even after a long and grueling day.

During his period of convalescence at Fragrant Hills, he would pray on his knees for hours after Bible study sessions with fellow workers. Five hours at a stretch were not too long for him. He would kneel on one knee when he found his wounds too painful to do so on both.

Like I said, friends, the road to discipleship is not an easy road and a soft life. If we determine to do great things for God in our generation, then we must be prepared for God to get out his pruning knife on us to do the necessary work and painful things in us to make us clear and empty channels through which his grace can flow through as a means of blessing to others. How we impact our generation for God with our life will depend upon how willing we are to lose it for him and his glory.

Let us pray.