The Journey Of Faith

There’s something quietly deceptive about the word arrival.

We love the sound of it — the sense that the journey’s over, the destination reached, the work done. “I’ve arrived,” we say. The culture trains us to think in terms of achievements and milestones, success stories and finish lines. But faith doesn’t speak that language.

Faith speaks in verbs, not trophies.

When Jesus said, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me,” He wasn’t describing a single decision or a one-time altar call. He was describing a road. A life lived in motion. A journey of following, losing, finding, and following again.

The journey of faith is not about getting there; it’s about staying with Him.

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1. The Invitation That Never Ends

There are some words you never outgrow. “Follow Me” is one of them.

Peter heard those words beside a Galilean lake when the nets were still dripping. “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He dropped everything to obey. But years later, after miracles and ministry, Peter heard those same words again — on another shore, beside another fire. “Follow Me,” Jesus said once more.

The invitation hadn’t expired.

And that’s how faith works. It keeps calling us forward even when we think we’ve seen it all. There’s always another stretch of road. Another lesson in trust. Another chance to surrender what we thought we’d already surrendered.

When Jesus invites you to follow, He’s not adding a new rule to your life — He’s inviting you into a new rhythm. Discipleship is not a status; it’s a direction. It’s saying “yes” again when your heart is tired, when you don’t understand, when you’ve failed before.

Faith isn’t about “arriving.” It’s about remaining.

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2. When You Hit the Wall

Every pilgrim meets the wall.

That moment when prayers dry up. When the songs that once lifted you now echo flat. When you keep showing up, but inside you’re running on fumes. The wall is not a punishment; it’s a mercy. It’s the place where God dismantles your illusions of self-sufficiency so He can rebuild you in grace.

Peter met his wall in a courtyard one cold night.

A servant girl pointed him out — “You were with Him!” — and fear took over. Three denials later, the rooster crowed and the words of Jesus came flooding back: “Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”

Luke says Jesus turned and looked at Peter. Not with disgust, but with recognition — a look that said, You thought you knew yourself, but I knew you all along.

That’s what the wall does. It reveals what’s real.

Some of us meet it through failure. Others meet it through loss — a diagnosis, a betrayal, a dream that dissolves. Whatever shape it takes, the wall is God’s classroom for the soul. The spiritual masters used to say that until you hit the wall, you’re still living off second-hand faith. You believe in God conceptually, but not intimately. The wall strips away the concept so that the relationship can begin.

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3. Mendoza and the Weight of the Net

You remember the scene from The Mission. Rodrigo Mendoza, the mercenary slave trader, whose violence had destroyed countless lives — including his own brother’s — finds himself broken, unable to forgive himself. A Jesuit priest offers him a strange kind of penance: to climb the sheer cliffs above the waterfall carrying the net that once held his weapons and armor.

He ties the heavy bundle to his back and begins to climb. The others ascend lightly; Mendoza drags his past behind him. Every step is agony. The rope cuts into his shoulders. The falls thunder beside him, as if heaven itself is roaring, Let go!

At last, one of the priests climbs down, takes a knife, and cuts the rope. The net tumbles into the abyss below. Mendoza collapses in tears. The wall has done its work.

That’s what grace looks like when it breaks through shame.

We all drag nets — of regret, resentment, pride, guilt. And somewhere along the journey, God brings us to a cliff and says, This can’t go with you any farther. You can keep dragging it, or you can let Me cut it loose.

And the choice feels like death — because in a way, it is. “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

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4. What Dies and What Rises

The death Jesus asks of us isn’t annihilation; it’s transformation.

When Peter wept that night, something died — not his faith, but his illusion of control. His performance-based identity, his “I’ll never deny You” bravado, collapsed. And out of those ashes, a humbler, truer faith began to rise.

We talk about “dying to self” like it’s a grim duty. But it’s actually the door to freedom. The self we lose is the false one — the anxious, defending, pretending self. The self we find is the beloved self, hidden with Christ in God.