Sacred Prayer - a 5-Day Reading Planનમૂનો

Cruciformity is everything.

The whole practice of Christianity is the practice of cruciformity.

To form your life into the shape of a cross is to live like Christ, to live with your arms stretched wide open, to let go of all forms of control, to live with your vulnerable heart exposed, to love vulnerably enough to be hurt—this cruciformity is what love is.

When we commit to picking up our cross and living cruciform—this is when all of life begins to transform.

This is a profoundly countercultural, sacred way to live, because this is our Father’s world, and in our Father’s world, living cruciform is the greatest form of supernatural power. The way of Jesus is never about upward mobility but always about the way deeper down, the way of the cross, the way of cruciformity toward God-intimacy.

Cruciformity is always the healing trajectory toward intimacy.

At every crossroad of our lives, the call is to remember the direction of the Way Himself, whom we follow. He carries a cross and is going the way that will pass through suffering, toward a place of dying, to bring about the greatest joy of rising. Every real map will point the unexpected way toward joy: Gethsemanes are places of intimacy. Why expect another trajectory when you’re following a suffering Savior?

If we want our WayMaking God to make a way, we need to trust that His life-giving way in our lives always runs through seasons and valleys of suffering; He has no other way. Not because He doesn’t love us, but exactly because He does. Because “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 ESV). The suffering Savior wants nothing less than to be with us, and valleys of suffering is the way He is for us, near us, and in us, and tenderly, powerfully grows us more into wholeness and into the image of Himself.

Prayer

Lord, I want to live a cruciform life, and I surrender myself to You. Please use my suffering to draw me closer to You. Amen.