The Radical Cross

prayer and the cross (part 2)

2008-01-27

is this the cross of christ? 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…

prayer and the cross

2008-01-26

the cross of jesus christ

Yesterday I wrote of how prayer related to the throne of Jesus Christ. Today I want to tackle prayers relation to the cross of Jesus Christ.

The cross of Roman times had no conception of compromise. It didn’t ever make a single concession. It won every argument by killing its opponent and silencing him for good. It didn’t even spare Christ, but killed Him just the same as all of the rest. He was alive when they put Him on that Cross, but He was dead when the pulled Him down six hours later.

When the apostles went out through the Roman Empire to preach, what they preached was the cross. And this foolish preaching of the cross lead to half of the Roman Empire converting to Christianity by approximately 300 A.D..

It did all of this and continued to do it as long as it was permitted to remain what it always had been - a cross.