God has me here, planted right where I am, for reasons I may never understand. He’s in charge of my life, my future, my dreams – my everything. When I surrendered to His calling years ago, part of that yielding was saying to Him, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go and do what you want me to do, even if it means walking down paths that are hard and uncomfortable.”
I remember sitting on my bed for hours contemplating the cost of following Christ and what it meant for me – leaving behind a world wrapped around my fleshly desires and interwoven with sin patterns that had nearly destroyed me. But in spite of the destructive nature of my sin, I feared letting it go and embracing something new.
A whole year passed as I wrestled with these thoughts. And no matter how hard I tried to water down the Gospel message, He continued to remind me daily that following him required that I not only count the cost but that I daily be willing to take up my cross. Because I saw how much pain and suffering it brought to his life and to the lives of the disciples, fear often gripped me holding me back. How could I endure such difficulty if, in fact, it came my way? Was He worth it?
A whole year passed as I wrestled with these thoughts. And no matter how hard I tried to water down the Gospel message, He continued to remind me daily that following him required that I not only count the cost but that I daily be willing to take up my cross. Because I saw how much pain and suffering it brought to his life and to the lives of the disciples, fear often gripped me holding me back. How could I endure such difficulty if, in fact, it came my way? Was He worth it?
I still recall vividly that Easter morning in 1988 when I woke up knowing it was time – time to let go of the fears and throw myself into the arms of the one who I was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me. I held out my hands and offered up the sacrifice of my life, acknowledging that apart from his redemption I was hopelessly lost and in bondage to sin. I told him that I trusted his death and resurrection to save me from this misery and to redeem my life from the pit. For quite some time before this moment I had the intellectual understanding that Jesus was the only Son of God, perfect in every way, and that his death and resurrection paid the price for my sins. But until that moment, I’d refused to transfer my trust to Him.
There are days when I forget what I promised him that Easter morning, when the skies are blue, circumstances pleasant, and all seems right with my world. Then there are times like today, when I find myself living in a place, a situation that’s completely out of my comfort zone. When in my flesh I would choose something alltogether different. And that’s when I remember the cross and hear Jesus asking, “Will you follow me?" He never said it would be easy, or fun for that matter. He simply promised that He’d go before me and be with me through it all. And that His grace is sufficient; His power perfected in my weakness.
The world wants me to forget the cross, to deny the struggle and live for myself. But I know there's no way to do both. Either I’m living for Christ and following Him or I’m living for the world. I choose Christ even when it hurts.
"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
"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
