“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.“
Matt. 10:38
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Matt. 16:24
We can so easily process our faith to something respectable and somewhat pleasant. This is a natural tendency. But the cross has a stigma, we might think we can easily defuse it, rendering it as harmless. Acceptability is a wonderful thing to the modern day believer. It is easy to turn from all that would make us different, and grasp a crossless faith. It does seem we conform rather than transform.
Effort is being made right now to twist and nullify your belief in Jesus. It is a force that works on us, relentlessly. Satan intends to destroy you. He is frightened by the power of the cross, and the spiritual truth it contains. The cross (and resurrection) destroyed the devil’s kingdom of twisted darkness. He will never recover.
Just as Jesus carried the cross He was to die on, you and I are to follow His example. Jesus had to go to this place of death, and so are we. My cross is not purely emblematic or abstract symbolism. It entails a real death. I pick it up and go to die. Crucifixion is the end of me, it all comes down to this final point of termination.
Jesus escorts us to the point of death. This is to become the framework for a sincere discipleship. The cross, our cross, brings us to an end. To be worthy of Jesus is to bear it boldly. The cross develops into our thinking, and its dynamic pounds us into a spiritual reality. Jesus intensifies the cross, making it the mark of authenticity of a disciple.
We have no options, if we follow it must be with a cross. There is absolutely no room for us if we approach Him without it. The cross transmutes our lives, and transmits a signal that we have complied with Jesus’ wishes. If we advance at all, it will be through the cross only.
We must deny ourselves. That denial is an intense working. “I do not know the man” was Peter’s statement against Jesus. If we deny ourselves, we will take a stand against our own selves, turning against ourselves. We will be pinned to the mat.
Our focus should be on the cross. We must infuse it into our lives. A tea bag will flavor an entire cup. It turns a cup of boiling water into a wonderful beverage. The cross that belongs to us will have the same effect. It will make something where there was nothing.
“All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.”
Oswald Chambers
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Broken Believers 