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“When You Lift The Cross, It Lifts You”

Our Lord’s life was a life of suffering in order that suffering might be sanctified. He was a refugee in Egypt during his childhood, that refugees might draw comfort from his plight. In youth, he lived in a home of poverty, that the poor might know that his sympathies are always with them.

He knows what it is to be despised and rejected of men, in order that you and I might feel that he is always sufficient.

And on the Cross he thought of every person who would ever suffer. In those six hours he sanctified every agony through which every son and daughter of God could ever pass.

But our Lord turned Black Friday into a Good Friday, because where there is no Black Friday, there can be no resurrection Sunday. Where there is no going down into the valley of grief, there can be no rising up to the mountain of glory. Where there is no tom flesh, there can be no glorified body.

There is no such thing as the Christian life without bearing the cross. If we will accept the cross, it will become like wings to a bird; it will become like sails to a ship. In lifting the Cross, we shall find that it lifts us.

Think of one thing that causes you suffering today. Could this be part of the cross Christ calls you to carry? The Apostle Paul tells us to give thanks always to God the Father for everything (Ephesians 5:20). Can you thank God for the cross he asks you to carry? If not, ask God to give you grace.

By Dr Desmond Ford