DEVOTION//Take up your cross

15 Days of Prayer

316NOW’s 15 Days of Prayer effort began on January 25 and runs through February 8. Tap here for prayer suggestions for each of those 15 days.

[Jesus] called the crowd and his disciples together and said to them, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:34,35, EHV).

Take up your cross

Jesus pulls no punches about the cost of following him. It requires taking up a cross. It requires denying ourselves what we are inalterably convinced we need. It requires losing our lives.

A. W. Tozer describes what taking up a cross means.

The cross operates by destroying one established pattern, the victim's, and creating another pattern, its own. Thus it always has its way. It wins by defeating its opponent and imposing its will upon him. It always dominates. It never comprises, never dickers nor confers, never surrenders a point for the sake of peace. It cares not for peace; it cares only to end its opposition as soon as possible (The Root of the Righteous, p. 68).

The cross kills our selves

We should not expect that being a Christian guarantees we will skip through life on a smooth, level, paved path that requires no effort to travel. The opposite is the case. But not because we will encounter persecution, loss, rejection, and animosity. The pain of the cross we stagger under when following the Savior is worse than that.

The torture involved for Jesus-followers flows from allowing our sinful self to be killed by God's grace. The cross we carry as we follow Jesus requires us to treat as dead what our human heart strives for, values, clings to, and rejoices in. Following Jesus requires that we embrace the instrument that imposes an alien force on our lives. A force that is satisfied only with our complete surrender. A force that creates a pattern for our lives we would never have chosen.

Why carry this cross?

So why carry this cross?

We willingly carry the cross because God has given us treasure beyond counting in the grace that brought Jesus to Calvary's cross.

Our hearts may tell us the cost is too high because the cost is everything we cherish. Our hearts would be correct. But Jesus replaces what we assume is riches with wealth -- eternal wealth -- beyond measure.

That is the reason Jesus' disciples take up their crosses and follow him.