Taking Up our Cross to Follow Christ

"Then [Jesus] said, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?'"

One of Jesus' radical messages was for his disciples to take up an instrument of torture and death and follow him with a life of self-sacrifice.  You certainly don't hear that message from the likes of Joel Osteen and the TBN crowd!  And it's even a different calling than a plea to "admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer."  When Jesus called out his disciples he called them to abandon all their comforts and a life that was familiar to them.  I sometimes wonder what that would have been like for the disciples to drop their nets (their careers), their possessions, and their families to follow Christ.  

David Platt writes:  "Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation.  In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves. And history tells us the result. Almost all of them would lose their lives because they responded to his invitation."  (Radical, p. 12)

What about us?  Is the calling any different?  Am I willing to follow in the footsteps of the disciples and give up everything to serve Christ?
 

David Platt states, "We do have to give up everything we have to follow Jesus. We do have to love him in a way that makes our closest relationships in this world look like hate.  And it is entirely possible that he will tell us to sell everything we have and give it to the poor.  But we don't want to believe it.  We are afraid of what it might mean for our lives.  So we rationalize these passages away.  .  .And this is where we need to pause.  Because we are starting to redefine Christianity.  We are giving into the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with.  A nice, middle-class, American Jesus." (pp. 12 - 13)  We convince ourselves that Jesus doesn't mind our pursuit of the American dream or our nominal commitment to him.  Platt continues:  "But do you and I realize what we are doing at this point?  We are molding Jesus into our image.  He is beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is whom we are most comfortable with.  And the danger now is that when we gather in our church building to sing and life up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible.  Instead we may be worshiping ourselves."  (p. 13)