Taking up my cross

 The Apostle Paul tells the Curch in Corinth that the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. There are two big thoughts that caught my attention. The first one is that salvation is a continuous process. There is a point that salvation is instantaneous, where we are covered by the blood of Christ and we enter into the family of God. Where salvation becomes continuous or a process is when we grow in grace. At our initial salvation experience, we get all of God, the continuous part is where God gets all of us. Call it maturing, becoming a living sacrifice, sanctification, or any other term, it is where we grow up and give our lives completely over to God. It is making God the Lord of every part of our life. 

  The second part is that the American church has glamorized the cross. We have turned into beautiful jewelry and artwork. The Romans had it as a brutal killing machine. The cross is a brutal way to go benevause not only do you suffocate to death, but you also drown in your own fluids. What makes it so brutal is that death is not instantaneous, but it takes several hours to accomplish.  The Romans were such good killing machines in the first century that they had crosses lined up and down the roads with people suffocating to death on them. So when Jesus tells His Disciples to pick up their cross and follow Him. I’m sure they felt like they were punched in the gut because they had a visual reminder on a consistent basis of what it means to pick up their cross, because it led to a brutal death.

  Jesus did pick up His cross and it led to being beaten, mocked and death. This is where the power of God comes in, because of Jesus obedience, God raised Him from the death three days later. If we are to be obedient to God and follow Him with our cross, we will be humiliated, beaten and maybe even die for our faith. But God is there for us and will sustain us along with walking along side of us and ahead of us. One day we will be with Him face to face for eternity.

  So what does it mean to pick up or cross to follow God. The basic answer is being a growing Christian and being in relationship with Him. There is also the things that God has called specifically to do. It’s often hard, our actions and motives will be questioned and there is a chance thy we will be alienated by those we hold dear to our hearts. This process will help us to see what is important and it is allowing God to sanctify us. The other part is that picking up our cross requires total abandonment. It is something we can not half ass. God does dot require apart of us but all of us every day.The cool part is that we get to rely on God more and that He will be made known to all the world. Here are my two questions:

  Have we beautified to where it has lost all its power and authority?

  What cross is God calling for us to pick up and to follow Him?

Be the Light

  

 In John 1, the Apostle John talks about how Jesus was with God the Father and how He became man to dwell among His creation. Verses 4-5 caught my eye because it goes;

In Him was life and the light was the light of all people. The light shines into the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:4-5 NRSV 

   Throughout the Bible and especially in John’s writings, there is this connection between truth and light.  If we are to be in the light or Gods presence, we need to not only know the truth but put it into practice. This passage makes several things clear. The first one is we can’t have truth withou being in the light. In essence, we can not have one with out the other. The second one is that Truth is not subjective. Ultimate truth is the same a century ago, today and forever in the future. This means that Truth is the same in every culture and not based on current fads, feelings or the weather, because those can change on a dime and God and His truth doesn’t. This is what makes Gods truth absolute. For those who have a hard time with absolute truth, how do you deal with gravity. We are going to have gravity no matter if we are in Australia or Northern Minnesota. No matter how well we transfers gravity, airplanes still have to come back to earth. As much as we can go on about truth, absolutes and God being the ultimate light, how do we put it into practice

  In Matthew 5, Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world, and it means several things. The first one is that if we are to be in the light, we can not continuously live in sin or disobedience to God and His commands. When we continuously live in sin, without seeking repentance or to change, it means that we are living in the dark and do not know God or His grace. This means we care about our own motives and desires more than Gods. It means that it is am about me . 

Secondly, since God is calling us to be the light of the world, it means that we are His representatives to a world that is hurting, lost and even in chaos. How many of us gone walking at night without a flashlight? When we do this, we can not see where we are going and we are liable to get lost, trip, fall and get hurt. When we are in the dark we have a hard time seeing the path and our judgement is distorted. When we are light of the world we are lighting others people’s path and showing them true reality and not something that is distorted.

In essence, when we are being the lighthouse and God is the lamp, we re providing a warning during a storm or rough seas and we often point people to safety which is Gods love and grace. So here is a question, what is the pint of a lighthouse when the sun is out and the waters are calm? God calls us to be a lighthouse or the light of the world because the world is a dark place filled with chaos due to sin and stupidity. Being the light brings peace, understanding and discernment, all we need to do is trust God and walk in light and goodness while sharing it with others