Pick Up Your Cross And Follow Me!

Hello To Everyone:

I would like to look at Luke 9:23 - Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

In my last post we found out that the God set up a system that all saved people must be like his son Jesus Christ.  In this post I want to start showing how that process is to take place. 

Lets now look at our first verse of this post, Luke 9:23.  If you can see its broken down into 4 sections.  The 1st section is where Jesus is asking the question "If anyone desires to come after me".  Jesus knows what God wants of his children after they get saved, and because of this Jesus knows he can not forse the issue, this is why salvation is a free gift.  So as a free gift, Jesus asks the question "If", not you must but "If", he knows that people are going to follow him and he want's to show them how to do it. 

The 2nd section Jesus wants us to deny ourself's.  What he is saying is that we must forget what we did in the past and to start fresh following his way of life.  This process is not easy but if we want to follow Jesus we must start turning off our old self and start working on a new self.

The 3rd section Jesus is telling us how to start this process of turning our life around.  If you remember God made man in his image.  We also know that God is a spirit and does not have a physical body as we know of.  The image that God made was our inside soul or our spirit in his image.  Of course this was all before Adam and Eve mested up God's plans.  Ever since our sinful fall God has been working with man to fix us up the way he wants us to be, this is why we must take up our cross on a daily basis, yes I mean we need to do this ever day of our physical life.  When I think of carring a cross, I think of it being used for my death on it.  This is some what true, to what we have to do spiritally speaking.  Our old spirit the one that allways sinned and turned from God, had to be put to death so we can take the shape of the Holy Spirit that came to live with us when we asked God into our lives.  By taking up our cross and dieing on a daily basis then the Holy Spirit can be in charge of our spirit instead of our old spirit would be in charge.  The Apostle Paul looked at this process as a different challenge.  Lets look at 2 Timothy 4:7,8 -  I have  fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.  In this passage St Paul is running a race, and if he wins then there is a crown given to him or anyone whom wins the race, gets a crown from the Lord Jesus in due time.  Either we carry a cross or we run a race, we as christians has a daily job of changing who we are into what God the Father wants us to be.

The 4th and last section is Jesus telling us we need to do all of these things and then to follow his examples for a better life.

In my next post I will be continuing our daily walk with the Lord Jesus.  Until then have a good day.