Impact and InfluenceSample

Pick Up Your Cross

Jesus tells potential followers that the cost to follow Him is rooted in them willfully turning away from their own self-fulfilling desires. He suggests that this type of sacrifice is a matter of the human will. He then says that along with giving up personal desires, followers of Christ must also take up their cross daily and follow Him.

The cross was one of the most painful, bloody, mind bending encounters that led to death. But the cross is so much more than that. It’s a place that symbolizes the beginning of new life. It represents grace and forgiveness. More than that, it represents the thing that created an open path for us to follow Christ, for us to pick up our different crosses and make an impact the same way Jesus did by carrying His cross.

Have you been carrying your cross? You’re not really following Jesus unless you are also carrying your cross. You haven’t really scratched the surface of true worship until you’ve laid down your life in order to pick up everything Heaven has assigned your shoulders to carry—that book, that career, that community initiative.

Carrying the cross might be tedious and painful, but as long as it means intimacy with Jesus and a purposeful life, it will always be worth it. Today, let's not focus so much on the pain of sacrifice, but let’s zero in on the fact that sacrifice is an act of worship.

Prayer: Father, thank You for the opportunity to abandon my desires for a purposeful life lived in intimacy with You. Though carrying the cross will be heavy, I want to follow you more than I want to be comfortable. Strengthen my shoulders as I carry my cross. In Jesus’ name Amen.