Take Up Your Cross
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.’” – Matthew 6:24-27[/perfectpullquote]This passage comes immediately after Jesus tells His disciples that He must be killed and then raised from the dead 3 days later. Peter immediately rebukes Jesus for saying such things and Jesus responds by telling Peter that he is being selfish and not seeking God’s will. We are all guilty of that, right? How often do we seek our own benefit and desires instead of seeking the Lord’s will? Jesus follows his short conversation with Peter with an announcement to all of His disciples. He told them that there would be a price for doing the right thing, but that price would be much less than doing the wrong thing.
When Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” He was informing His disciples that they will face tough times ahead if they decide to continue to follow Him. Sometimes, I hear from people that God will bless you and you will never suffer if you follow Him and do the right thing. However, this passage seems to contradict that. To follow Jesus means that we set aside our own agenda, our own comfort, and our own ideas in order to follow Him and to place Him first in our lives.
Jesus asked His disciples some questions to get them to think. What good is all the wealth in the world if we lose our soul in order to get it? All of us will eventually die. We will be judged based on what we have done while on earth, and that judgment is going to last forever.
Sometimes we can get so caught up by the things of this world. Such things like “how many followers do I have on Twitter” or “how many likes can I get on my Facebook post” can take up so much of our time and energy because we are not focused on what really matters. We put ourselves first when we think we know what is best for us instead of searching out what is best for God. It is more important that you live your life for Christ because that will have an eternal impact not only in this age, but in the age to come as well.
So, how are you living your life? Are you living a life to glorify and honor yourself or are you striving to glorify and honor God? Honoring God means you need to put yourself in the back seat and let Him take control. Not only that, but it also means that you will probably go through difficult times because that’s what happens when you deny yourself instead of pleasing yourself. As C.T. Studd wrote in one of his poems, “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past, Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
– Pastor David Guenin
