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There is a temptation, subtle but persistent, that most of us carry into our relationship with God. We come to him not with open hands but with a carefully prepared script. We have already decided what victory should look like, what the timeline ought to be, and which paths are acceptable. We bring our preferences, our plans, and our definitions of success, and we quietly expect God to play the role we have written for him. The question worth sitting with today is this: are we truly following Jesus, or are we simply inviting him to follow us?

The Right Answer, the Wrong Expectation

In Mark 8, beginning at verse 27, Jesus asks his disciples a question that cuts straight to the heart. After asking what the crowds are saying about him, he turns the question personal. Who do you say I am? Peter answers with stunning clarity: You are the Messiah. It is a profound and correct confession. But within moments, the cracks appear.

When Jesus begins to speak openly about suffering, rejection, and death, Peter pulls him aside and rebukes him. The word used in the original language is striking. It is the same word used when Jesus rebukes storms. Peter is not gently suggesting an alternative. He is firmly correcting what he believes to be a strategic error. He has the right identity but the wrong mission in mind. He wants a conquering king, not a suffering servant.

Jesus responds with equal directness. He tells Peter that his mind is set on human concerns rather than divine ones. It is a rebuke worth receiving personally. How often do we confess that Jesus is Lord while simultaneously resisting the path he is actually leading us down? How often do we panic when God’s direction does not match our budget, our comfort zone, or our preferred outcome?

The Cost of Normal Discipleship

What follows in Mark 8 is not a call to radical, elite-level Christianity. It is the baseline description of what it means to follow Jesus at all. He calls the crowd alongside his disciples, which is itself significant. This message is not for a select few. It is for anyone who wants to follow him.

He lays out three non-negotiables. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow him.

To deny yourself is to step down from the throne of your own life and hand it over. It is a decisive no to the demand that your preferences come first, and a yes to the lordship of Jesus.

To take up your cross, in the first century, carried a meaning that had nothing to do with jewellery or bumper stickers. A person carrying a cross was not coming back. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison cell, captured this with unflinching honesty. He wrote that when Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die. The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise comfortable life. It meets us at the very beginning of following Jesus.

To follow him is to actively align your life with his direction, even when that direction is costly, confusing, or uncomfortable.

Jesus then asks a question that has echoed through the centuries. What does it benefit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit their soul? The answer, of course, is nothing. All the wealth, status, and security this world can offer cannot purchase back a wasted life. As 1 Corinthians 1 makes clear, the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. The path that looks risky from the outside is, in fact, the only path that leads to true life.

On Prayer and Control

There is a tension worth addressing honestly. If Jesus invites us to ask anything in his name, as he does in John 14, does that not hand us a kind of control? And if we are called to surrender control, how do these two things fit together?

They are not in opposition. They are complementary. Bringing our genuine desires to God is not the same as issuing demands. We are invited to pray with honesty, to bring our real longings and real fears before the Father. But we hold those requests with open hands, anchoring them not in our predictions about how things should unfold, but in the character of a God who is wise, loving, and sovereign. Jesus himself modeled this in Gethsemane, where he brought his honest anguish to the Father and then surrendered the outcome entirely. Not my will, but yours.

Our assignment is to ask, seek, and trust. God’s assignment is to run the universe. Once we have prayed, we do not need to carry the weight of managing the outcome. We can leave the results at the altar and trust the Father with what comes next.

The Glory That Makes It Worth It

The passage does not end in sacrifice. It ends in glory. Six days after Peter’s confession, Jesus takes three of his disciples up a high mountain. There, his appearance is transformed. His clothes become dazzling white, beyond anything earthly. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the law and the prophets. Luke’s account adds a detail worth pausing on: they were discussing with Jesus his departure, his exodus. Jesus is preparing to accomplish the ultimate act of rescue, setting humanity free from sin and death by becoming our Passover lamb.

And then the voice of the Father speaks from the cloud. This is my dearly loved Son. Listen to him.

The transfiguration is not a detour from the road to the cross. It is a window into why the cross is worth it. The glory that shines through in that moment is the same glory that awaits on the other side of surrender, the other side of sacrifice, the other side of giving up control.

The well done that the world offers fades in seconds. The glory that Jesus offers is eternal.

So the invitation stands, for each of us, today. Lay down the script. Take up the cross. Listen to the Son. Trust the one who walked out of the tomb, because his glory will have the final word.