Our Cross

Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
" 'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her motherinlaw—
a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'^[a]

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:32-39

Lately I have found myself quiet and still before the Lord due to various issues occurring in my own life. Writing has become my time of focus on the Lord and what it is that He has for me and lately that time has not been as significant as it once was due to sin in my own life. I have been struggling in many areas lately trying to figure out what God would actually have me do in order to serve and honor Him with my life. After spending some still time before the Lord, I discovered that my busyness, my ministries and my job as a mom had taken precedence to my time with Him. God is to come before all else and if we put anything else in our life before Him, it becomes our idol and we in turn are serving those things instead of serving God. When our focus is on other things, we find that our fellowship with God is disrupted for that time and we are unable to hear Him and our lives become unsettled.

After these last few weeks of reflection and stillness before Him, He made things clear reminding me of what priorities in life should look like. I began to recognize God as the Creator and Owner of all things. I began to recognize that He is self-sufficient and needs for absolutely nothing. He does not need the sacrifices that we lay at His feet and He does not need our offerings because everything we have already (our time, our money, our jobs, our homes) belong to Him.

God does however want and He needs our consecration to Him. He wants our complete love and devotion and when we serve, if we are doing if for any other reason than to serve and honor Him, than it is worthless.

The cost to follow Christ is very clear when we look at scripture. Not even the love of our family should ever be greater than our love for Him. Our service to our friends and family should never come before our time with Him. He should be our priority at all times.

True followers of Christ will pick up their crosses and follow Him completely, which is symbolic to that of Roman practice in which criminals would carry their own crosses as a public display of their guilt. When we carry our crosses, we are professing the supremacy of Jesus Christ in our lives and our total submission to His very authority. It is then and only then, that when we finally turn over our lives to Him will we truly discover the call He has upon our lives and find ourselves.