What does the cross mean to you? Is it a fashion statement that you wear? Does it remind you of your faith? When Jesus preached and said, "Take up your cross and follow me." What did the cross mean to the people who heard those words? Jesus was telling them that to follow him meant death. The cross was, at the time, viewed as a cruel and horrific way to die. Did Jesus mean that to follow Him guaranteed a literal death? No, of course not, although for some followers it would mean that. He meant that to follow Him you would have to die to self every day.
Dying to self means giving up what you want and wanting only what Christ wants. Dying to self means doing those things that we might not want to do. Or not doing something that we want very much to do. Do I really have to forgive the person who betrayed me? Yes! Do I really need to abstain from sex before marriage? Yes! Do I really need to step out in faith, outside of my comfort zone, and speak to people about my faith? Yes!
In Luke 14: 27 our Lord says this,
"And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple."
So is the Lord saying that the only way we can be His disciple is to be miserable and without joy. No! In fact quite the opposite. In Matthew 10: 38-39 Jesus tells us,
"And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."
So Jesus tells us that to find our life, to find our purpose, to find our place in God's plan we should lose our life. Bearing your cross and denying yourself, this is where our true joy can be found. In being obedient and willing to give up our desires and our plans and take on God's desires and God's plan. Our true joy is to die to self. The joy of the cross is that it brings reconciliation with God.
Remember that when Jesus was saying these things the crucifixion had not happened yet. The ones who heard him speak at that moment only knew the cross as an instrument of death. They could not look back like we can to see what the cross symbolized. Only after His death and resurrection could they look back on those words and understand what following Christ really meant.
Suffering is a part of being a Christian (emphasis added). Suffering isn't always physical. Sometimes I believe when we see the word 'suffering' we only imagine it in that way, but suffering can also be emotionally and mentally.
"But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you." I Peter 5: 10
"Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5: 3-5
"But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." Philippians 3: 7-11
When was the last time you heard a sermon about suffering? It is not a popular topic. We want to go to church, at least it seems, to learn how to be a good person, to learn how to get what we want from God, to learn how to be happy. Most people today don't seem to want to know that suffering is, and was, an expected part of the Christian life.
The purpose of suffering is to produce the ability to endure, to have a Christian character, to have hope and to know that the Holy Spirit lives within us and allows us to, as Paul says in Philippians, count the loss of all things as rubbish so that we can gain Christ. If we have righteousness according to Paul it is not our own but it is "from God by faith".
In James 1: 2-4 he tells us,
"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."
So when we suffer, we need to look at what comes from it. Patience, endurance, and hope. Our dying to self, our suffering helps us to remain faithful and to wait on the Lord knowing that in the end, when we endure, we shall have the "crown of righteousness" as Paul tells Timothy in Timothy 4: 8.
We can join in prayer with the words of this old hymn, A Sovereign Protector I have :
“Inspirer and hearer of prayer, Thou Shepherd and Guardian of Thine, My all to Thy covenant care I sleeping and waking resign.
If Thou art my Shield and my Sun, The night is no darkness to me; And fast as my moments roll on, They bring me but nearer to Thee.”
Amen
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