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Following Christ When the Way is Hard

Following Christ When the Way is Hard

Last updated on: June 22, 2026 at 10:35 pm by Rob Giannamore

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Following Christ When the Way is Hard 2026-06-22T22:35:25-04:00 Rob Giannamore

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Miller’s Station UMC| June 21, 2026| Anchor Verse: Mathew 10:24-39

Expect Opposition

When we take a step towards Jesus and begin following his way rather than the ways of social media influencers and those who misrepresent the Gospel of love, we can expect opposition.

I remember when I was in the exploring phase of my pre-formation for seminary/monastic life, my vocational director gave me a magazine that listed and described many of the religious orders I could have applied to and become a member of. I remember one very tiny ad in the middle of the magazine. This order advertised that they did work in some far-flung island in the Pacific, and get this – had the highest number of martyrs of any other order. I kid you not. Not the greatest selling point.

The loudest voices in Christianity right now are not the historic voices that we all grew up with. The problem is that they are still Christian. I would opine that those who follow these louder voices are not following the historical notions of the way of Jesus. It reminds me of reading accounts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer during World War II. Bonhoeffer taught that true discipleship in Nazi Germany required costly obedience, public resistance to evil, and a willingness to suffer or die for Christ. He believed the German church, like our own American church, had capitulated to nationalism, embraced “cheap grace,” and abandoned the call to follow Jesus regardless of political pressure. “Bonhoeffer also believed that true discipleship involves a commitment to living out one’s faith in the world. He believed that the church should not be a separate entity from the world, but rather that it should be actively involved in working to bring about social and political change. He believed that the local church is the place where individuals can learn to live out their faith in the world and make a difference in their community.”

In our Matthew text, we receive guidance for the path before us: last week I spoke about how following Christ sets us apart, and this week I want to reflect on what that difference looks like in our daily lives.

Trust God’s care

We can begin to follow Christ when we learn to fully trust God’s care.

We are again told in Mathew to not fear. As you have heard me allude to other sermons, this is a common theme for Jesus. He is always reassuring us that we can trust in God. As a mental health clinician, I know a few things about human conditioning. One of which is if you tell a kid not to be afraid of something and then follow up with a loving embrace, a confident presence, then eventually, whatever the kid is afraid of, they will generally yield and learn to trust you.

We must train ourselves to be brave Christians. As a clinician, I also see how deeply trust has been wounded in our time; many people no longer know where to place their confidence, because they are no longer sure who God is or how God meets us. And so when the church simply says, “trust God,” those words can sound distant unless they are made flesh in a people who have learned to lean upon the Lord. We must teach and learn that this kind of trust is not formed in an instant. It is cultivated through prayer, through worship, through the steady remembering of God’s faithfulness in seasons when the road is clear and in seasons when it is dark. We learn trust by returning again and again to the One who has never let us go. Then, as that trust takes root in us, we begin to bear witness to it—not only with our words, but with a calm spirit, a merciful presence, and lives that quietly proclaim that God is near.

This is part of our Wesleyan inheritance. John Wesley taught that grace goes before us, walks beside us, and continues its holy work within us, shaping us into a people who can trust God more deeply each day. Our heritage reminds us that providence is not an abstract idea, but the gentle and persistent care of God at work in ordinary life. So let us keep walking, step by step, trusting that the Lord is with us, guiding us tenderly along the way even when we cannot yet see the whole path ahead.

When we adopt this posture, this will become a model of action rather than words for those around us, especially those who do not speak our language of grace of how to trust God’s care.

Choose Christ above All

I have written a few pieces on the notion of Christ and the notion of universal love. Here, I challenge my readers and you to replace the word Christ with love, and you will get a sense of where I am going with this. Jesus tells us that a disciple is not above their teacher. When I read this in my preparation for lectio, I was immediately drawn to humility and ego. When we tie this into the notion of choosing Christ or love above all, we begin to see the challenge here for us.

When we bow to the presence of Christ in all we meet, we make an intentional posture to choose Christ above all. When we build a faith that is grounded in being better than someone else, whether it be the color of our skin, our gender, our sexuality, or even our nationality, we miss the message that Jesus was offering in first-century Palestine. God humbled himself to become human and then took this a step further by dying on the cross.

Choosing Christ above all is a posture of humility. Saint Benedict, in Chapter 7 of his Rule, describes humility as a ladder by which the soul ascends toward God—not by self-assertion, but by surrender, obedience, truthfulness, restraint, and reverence. He teaches that the humble person learns to let go of self-will, to accept correction, to speak gently, and to live with the quiet awareness that all of life is held before the eyes of God. In other words, to choose Christ above all is to let Christ draw us down from pride and lift us into holiness. This is not humiliation for its own sake, but the freedom that comes when our lives are no longer centered on ourselves and are instead rooted in the love and will of God.

Carry the Cross with Courage

I find the notion of cross-bearing a bit of a weird experience. Either we hang instruments of corporal punishment around our necks, or at the front of our sanctuary or even on hills around our town. It is no wonder that modern American Christianity is so obsessed with domination and violence. This would be very strange if a first-century Galilean Jew came back today. “To take up our cross” has become a clichéd term that I feel has lost its meaning. The challenges we face in sharing the gospel message, wrestling life back into our congregation, are not easy. Jesus’ words in Mathew today prepare us not for despair but for courage. The call is not to seek conflict but to remain faithful when it comes. We learn in Mathew that faithfulness in a conflicted world is our witness. The cross we carry, then, is not only the burden of suffering, but the daily choice to remain rooted in love when fear, bitterness, or weariness tempt us otherwise. It is the quiet courage to keep serving, keep praying, and keep telling the truth of the gospel even when such faithfulness is misunderstood or costly. In this way, cross-bearing becomes less about dramatic display and more about steadfast discipleship—the long obedience of hearts formed by grace. And when we carry the cross with Christ, we discover that even in hardship we are not abandoned, for the One who calls us forward also walks beside us.

Find Life by Losing it

I want to close our time by reflecting on Jesus’ promise that we find life precisely when we learn to let go of it. I have often heard it said that we suffer most when we cling, and I see that truth often in my office: people holding tightly to negative self-talk, painful memories, or old versions of themselves that no longer bring life. Churches can do this too, holding on so tightly to the way things were that they cannot receive what God is doing now. If we make self-protection our god, we lose the deeper life God offers. But if we release control and follow Christ, even when it costs us, we begin to discover what true life really is.

I felt that truth recently when I went for a walk in the woods with my daughter. It may be one of the last walks of that kind for a while, as she moves into a new season of life and into bigger things in her schooling. Each year around my birthday, I take a week to reset, to listen, and to remember what matters most. One of the songs I listen to every year on my birthday is “Trip Around the Sun,” and one of its quiet insights is that something in us changes when we learn to loosen our grip. Letting go does not erase love, memory, or meaning; rather, it teaches us to receive life as gift instead of possession.

This is what discipleship asks of us: dying to ego, dying to the need to be right, dying to the need to win, and dying to the identity that has been shaped more by fear or culture than by Christ. Only when the false self begins to fall away can the true self in Christ emerge. Jesus is not asking for the annihilation of the self, but for its transformation. He is calling us to lay down the fearful, defensive life so that grace can form in us a life marked by freedom, love, and holy courage.

When we lose the life shaped by fear, sin, and self-rule, we find the life shaped by grace, love, and the purposes of God. Bonhoeffer understood this both literally and spiritually. He knew that only by surrendering the life shaped by fear, nationalism, and self-preservation could the church recover its true life in Christ. And the same is true for us: when we release what we cannot keep, Christ leads us into what we could never create for ourselves—the abundant life of communion with God. Amen

Benediction

May God, our Guide and Guardian, bless you and keep you, and may you rest in the assurance that God hears our cries, draws us together as a family, and points us down the path toward well-being and flourishing for all creation. Amen.

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