prayer and the cross (part 2)
Praying for the cross in our own lives requires seeing the cross for what it is.
It’s not a golden symbol just to be hung around our necks as an ornament, or to decorate our walls. It’s not a magical sign we can wave in front of our faces to ward off evil. It’s an instrument of death.
We must bring the cross to bear in every area of our lives, so that we may slay our sin with it, and be crushed under its weight.
A few weeks ago, I realized that Jesus doesn’t say that we are to take up His cross and follow Him, but to take up our cross and follow Him. There isn’t a single person that is qualified to take up anyone’s cross but their own, much less the cross the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Prayer, earnestly pray, that Christ would reveal your cross to you, so that you may shoulder its burden, and get started dying. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, that when Jesus calls a man, He calls him to come and die. The method of our death will be the cross that God has appointed for us from eternity past.
It’s high time that as Christians we pray for the Cross, and get busy dying…
