What Does It Mean To Take Up Your Cross? (PartII)
Blessings in the Mighty Name of Yeshua Hamashiach!
Here are some practical ways you can actually take up your cross daily.
1. Jesus Or Your Own Way?
You have a choice to make. Jesus isn’t forcing you to pick up your cross and follow him. He’s inviting you.
Do you want to follow Jesus or do you want to go your own way? Before you do anything else, you need to decide if you want to follow Jesus, if you want to pick up your cross.
Jesus is inviting you into a life full of peace and joy. But it does have a cost. And you need to decide if you want to follow him or go your own way.
2. Letting Go Of What You Want
In order to grab ahold of what Jesus has for you, you first need to let go of your own desires. The problem with our desires is they keep us from what God has for us.
And listen, it’s not that God wants to keep us from what we want. It’s that our desires are too weak. We long for something less than what God has for us.
C.S. Lewis in the The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses says, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”God has something incredible for you. But you have to let go of what you want so that you can grab ahold of what he has for you.
I can tell you from my own experience, GOD’S PLAN is far greater and better than yours!
Shalom
Pastor Williams