WAYS TO TAKE UP YOUR CROSS

I’d like to ask you a question today. What do you think Jesus meant when He said follow me?

Jesus said, in Luke 9:23, those who want to be my disciple, have to deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. In the 21st-century America, we are not real big on denying ourselves anything.

And today, we don’t know what the cross was really all about. We think it’s a piece of jewelry or something you see in your church or on the roof of your church. To His “Christ followers”, when he was alive and after his death, it was something horrible. It was a very feared and awful form of capital punishment. We would not think of wearing an electric chair or a little gas chamber around our necks as a piece of jewelry, would we. So when Jesus said deny everything, leave it all behind everything of this world, and take up your cross, He was saying to deny  even your own life. In fact, He said, if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not worthy of me.

Picking up your cross, and following Jesus is a death sentence. For us in America, it is the death of ourselves and our desires and the world and worldly or carnal and unbiblical or ungodly thinking. In some parts of the world it literally means giving your life. But it is worth it to gain Jesus and the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The scripture says, Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. (Hebrews 12:2)

That Joy is a renewed relationship, through forgiveness of sins and belief, with you and me, and a future together in heaven. We put too much importance on this life here. Jesus wants us to pick up our cross and deny ourselves and look forward to our time with Him in heaven.

I can’t tell you how to do that or what you need to deny, but I encourage you to ask the Lord to show you what He wants you to do with these verses of scripture.