Take Up Your Cross
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” - Luke 9:23
Dear Reader: I ask for your gracious indulgence as I take you on a crazy ride through my brain. The loop-de-loop track full of ups, downs, twists, turns, darkened tunnels, and sun-touching heights might make you dizzy and confused, but I promise - there’s a specific and purposeful place I’m leading you to. So, buckle up - here we go!
2022 was a tough year for me. Within seven months of each other, my biological dad and my stepdad passed away. My biological dad died very suddenly. The last time I physically saw and spent time with him had been three months earlier (thanks COVID!), the last time I had spoken to him on the phone was two weeks earlier, and the last text I sent him was five days earlier and very vague. I didn’t get to say goodbye, spend the time we had been planning together, and he was alone when it happened.
My stepdad (who raised me for literally most of my life) developed a very aggressive, fast-moving form of Lewy Body Dementia and passed within two months of his most serious symptoms. I did get to say goodbye over the phone as he lay unconscious in his hospice bed, but there were no words that could properly express everything he meant to me, nor how grateful I was to him, and definitely not how much I loved him.
When you get older and start to lose your parents (my beloved mother-in-law passed suddenly five years ago), and you realize you, too, are getting older, it makes you think. Or maybe, it just made me think.
When I wrote my last blog, The Gift of the Magi, examining the magi (pagans, sorcerers, and magicians who were not connected in ANY way to Judaism except perhaps stories from the time of Daniel and the Israelite’s exile in Babylon), I was really stuck on how these magi recognized the importance of Jesus’ birth to the extent that they traveled a great distance to worship Him. I started thinking about baby Jesus - born to die for my sins - and God put Luke 9:23 on my heart: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
I’ve always read that verse in the same way all of you probably have, and I’ve taken it to mean what all of you also probably have. To follow Jesus, we have to deny the worldly things we want in order to be about our Father’s business of winning souls for the Kingdom and glorifying God.
But I think we’ve been reading that all wrong. To be clear, all of those things apply and are important, but, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” means something more, and harder, than simply living a good life and striving to be the light of the world.
Taking Jesus as our example, we know He was born for one purpose: to die for our sins to reconcile us to God. He was born to die on the cross - HIS cross.
Circling back on the track of my mind to the beginning where I wrote about losing my dads, the thoughts I’ve been having concern my own mortality. I’m rapidly moving toward the twilight of my life (still a good couple of decades away as I plan to hit AT LEAST 100, but still), and I’ve become more conscious about examining whether I’m doing what God sent me here to do. From the moment Jesus was born, He was always moving in His purpose toward the cross. While I know I haven’t been moving in MY purpose from birth, what about now through the rest of my time here?
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” The cross we need to take up isn’t the sacrifice of all the “good stuff” of the world (though it IS important to keep our eyes on Jesus and not let the world distract us from Him). The cross we need to take up is OUR purpose here.
Jesus’ purpose was the cross. What’s yours?
Exodus 9:16 tells us we are here strategically. “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” We are no accident. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), endowed with all we need to fulfill His purpose for us (Jeremiah 29:11), and we exist here/now to be an intended part of His plan (Esther 4:14).
That is our cross we must pick up daily - God’s purpose for us. We all must discover what our cross is if we are to carry it daily. I think for some of us, there is one specific and obvious purpose like there was for Jesus, and for others of us, we may have a cross composed of a bunch of smaller crosses a la Voltron, or Power Rangers if you’re way younger than me (both were cartoons where smaller machines combined to make a mega machine). Either way, we need to figure out what our cross is immediately so we can carry it daily as we run our race. If you’re not sure what your cross is, 1 Corinthians 12:1-30 has a good menu:
“Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.”
Thank you for riding the roller coaster of my mind today - I hope you had an enjoyable time. Or at least, that it made you think. If you’re still not sure what your cross is, there are many “tests” online you can take to help determine your spiritual gifts, or, better yet, pray about it and consult a church elder or pastor.
One final thought: To deny ourselves to pick up our cross isn’t referring to turning our backs on the things of this world to focus on God - at least not completely. When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane and praying for this cup to pass from Him, that was His moment of weakness in fulfilling His purpose. Yet, he denied Himself in order to pick up His cross and fulfill His God’s Purpose (not HIS will, but GOD’S be done).
Every day, we must do the same.
AMEN
