Picking up Your Cross

Acts 11:26 “And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”

Now I start with this to point out it was not just a believer that were called the name of Christian but the Bible states here it was disciples. The 1828 Webster’s dictionary defines disciple as : A learner: a scholar: one who receives or professes to receive instruction from another. Of course this is the Bible we are talking about the instructions comes from the Word. Therefore I will go out on a limb here if I may and say a Christian is more than just a believer, but one who is learning by studying the Word. I will also take an assumption here and assume that we all agree that it does take a saved believe to take the step to become a learner and study the Word because you must have the Holy Spirit to help you learn the Word fully and correctly.

That all being said the main text i want to discuss today is Luke 9:23 “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

Go back up a verse and Jesus explains that He will suffer, be rejected, then slain and rise again, so following Him we will suffer. be rejected and may even be slained as well, and we as believers know we will rise again.

But here is what I want to stress today in 23 it says we must deny ourselves to take up our cross. I been in many churches all over America, and think most people are pretty liberal with the term of Christian today, and they feel that just by suffering of their normal life like an illness or other things that life brings that they are bearing a cross, but it is not suffering because you put yourself in a situation but is specifically suffering for Christ.

2 Timothy 3:12 “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”

If we live a godly life we will suffer.

2 timothy 2:12 “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:”

What am I getting at, well we will suffer if we follow after God. Taking up your cross daily means beibg prepared everyday to lay it all on the line and to be ready to suffer and die for Him. This means more than one hour on one day of the week. This means every second of every day. People think because we are so so blessed to have eternal salvation that we are free to live however and people often get spiritually lazy. They though maybe saved they become lazy and put their own desires before the will of God and just pencil God in to fit their own will and desires. If you want to take up your cross, you must deny your desires, your wants and put all that a side.