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. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
If I/you want to truly follow Christ, then I have to die to my old self, and become new again with him. You cannot be the same person, you are a slave to Jesus Christ. In John 3 verse 20 we have a simple but accurate explanation. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease."
Then we are to take up our cross, and that's fine. We love wearing our cross necklace, or our cross decals on our vehicles, heck I have it tattooed on my back. The cross is our symbol of Jesus taking on God's wrath in our place. Guess what...........that hadn't happened yet when Jesus told his disciples those verses. The cross to them was a example of gruesome torture and death. So Jesus was saying to them/us that we are to accept being tortured and demised and possible death? Then he says if we are to not accept those terms and live our lives they way we want to, without him, than we are to miss out on life we have in him. We have the option to give up our life that we cherish here and give our everything to him. We are giving up things maybe we have tried to achieve for ourselves, maybe goals, or blessings that come our way. BUT- we will receive his spirit, and his blessings and his heavenly treasures that we cant even imagine. God is BIG and his blessings or beyond our understanding...it takes Faith, it takes totally reliance on him, lets deny ourselves, and be one with Christ, lets take our cross, face dangers of this world, knowing that the power of God upholds us, lets loose this life on earth and gain eternal life with him....that's like trading in 30 min episode of Growing Pains and gaining a never ending season disc of Eternal Life.
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