Sunday Is the Easy Part

It's the middle of the week now, and I want to check on something.

On Sunday it was easy to agree with Jesus. Yes, take the lowly position. Yes, become like a child. Yes, stop striving to be the greatest in the room. Sitting in a chair with worship still in the air, that's an easy amen.

Then Monday came. Somebody got the credit for work you did. You opened your phone and watched someone else's life look better than yours. A conversation didn't go your way and you felt that old pull to intentionally prove you were right, prove you mattered, prove you belong at the top of whatever ladder you're trying to climb. Somewhere in there, without ever deciding to intentionally, you reached for significance again.

I'm not pointing at you and saying you're all that different than anyone else. I do the same thing. This is exactly why Jesus didn't say deny yourself one time. He said take up your cross daily. He knew the version of you that needs to be great doesn't die in a single Sunday moment. The old version of you is constantly trying to come back and be resurrected. Which means becoming small isn't a single decision you made last week that ends all of the temptation to go back. It's a decision that's sitting there waiting for you again today, in whatever room you walk into next.

The question is whether you'll actually take the low place at two o'clock this afternoon, when there's no worship playing and nobody's around to watch you do it.

So the real question isn't whether you agree with what Jesus said. You already do.

Being childlike gets real in all of the places you find yourself throughout the week, not only in church on Sunday. It's in the ordinary Wednesday moment where you choose, one more time, to lay down the need to be the greatest and trust that Someone bigger has you.

Let this be a reminder that the decision you've made to follow Jesus is an everyday recommitment. That's not a sign you're failing. It's a sign of your discipline and your commitment to your confession that Jesus is Savior and Lord — and it will give you renewed strength every day you do it.