Today, we’re going to be talking about what does it mean to carry your cross. Christians probably hear this phrase a lot, but do they really understand all that it entails? I think if we did, the church today would look a lot different! Let’s spend a couple minutes in this post talking about it!
First, let’s read Matthew 10:38.
38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
Matthew 10:38
According to Matthew 10:38, what must someone refuse to do if they don’t want to be worthy of the Lord? Now, the verse doesn’t explicitly say, “hey, if you DON’T want to be worthy of God, then do this“, but we can use context to understand the answer.
To refuse to be worthy of the Lord, you have to refuse to follow the commands and principles He sets forward. We all probably know what some of those are. Things like:
- Honor your father and mother.
- Don’t be drunk.
- Sex should only be between a man and woman married to each other.
- Avoid filthy communication (gossip, cursing, complaining, etc.)
- Don’t be prideful.
- Don’t wish for what other people have that you don’t.
- Don’t be greedy and want more than you already have.
The people who repeatedly engage in these types of behavior without feeling guilt or seeking to change are not worthy of the Lord. They refuse to do better. They refuse to get right with God, and thus the Bible says they refuse to be worthy of the Lord.i.
It’s important to note that EVERYONE has the potential to be worthy of the Lord.
- Jesus says in Revelation 3:20 that He stands at the door of your heart and knocks. He wants to be your friend and Savior. He wants you to let him in so that he can change your life for the better.
- We can also see in 2 Peter 3:9 where God says that he’s not willing that any should perish but that ALL should come to the saving grace and knowledge of Him.
However, we all have the free will to choose whether to accept God’s gift of grace and forgiveness by casting off our sin and taking up our cross, or we can choose to refuse it by remaining in a state of unrepentant disobedience.
If you choose to live in a state of sin apart from God, then YOU are the one who says “God, I don’t want to be worthy of You” and thus you condemn yourself to a life and an eternity apart from Him.
Think about it… Deuteronomy 32:4
He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4
If God was okay with your sin, disobedience, and your refusal to follow Him, would He be just?
Think about it like an interaction between a parent and a child:
- The parent says, “Child, don’t do this. If you do, you will be punished”.
- The child proceeds to do the thing that they’re not supposed to do
- The parent ignores the child’s disobedience, enacts no punishment, and continues on as if nothing happened.
If your parents told you not to do something because they’d punish you, but you did it anyway, and then you didn’t receive any punishment, would your parents be honest and just? No! They would be liars who were acting unjustly.
- How can you trust someone who lies to you?
- How can you put faith in someone who doesn’t abide by their word?
It makes sense to us when we think about the relationship between a parent and child, but we miss it when we think about God, our heavenly father, and us, his children. We pretend we can live however we want, flagrantly disregarding God’s commands, and then we get offended by the idea that our sin may somehow render us unworthy in the eyes of God.
If you refuse to follow God’s commands, you will be unworthy in His eyes, as he must maintain the standard He has set in His Word. If he didn’t maintain this standard, he wouldn’t be a God of truth and without iniquity.
(had to use big font to get the point across 😁)
Now, we’ve talked about refusing to follow the Lord. What else does Matthew 10:38 say you must refuse?
They have to refuse to take up their cross.
How is this different than refusing to follow the Lord?
Did you know that you could follow the Lord, but still refuse to take up your cross? Yep. That’s why Matthew made a delineation (separation) between these two thoughts in that verse.
If you’re not following the Lord, then you are unworthy of Him, as we discussed earlier. You are not saved. You are not living for Him.
However, there’s also a case where you’re following the Lord, but you’re not taking up your cross. Think about Jonah. Jonah 1:9 tells us that he feared the Lord. He worshipped Him. Jonah was a prophet! However, there was a cross that God called Jonah to bear and Jonah refused. What was that cross? Going to Nineveh. Jonah decided to get in the boat and head in the opposite direction of where God told him to go!
Think about the rich young ruler who went away sorrowfully in Matthew 19:22. The Bible says followed all of God’s commands, but he refused to bear the cross that God called him to bear. What was that cross? Jesus called him to sell his earthly possessions and come follow Him. What an offer! This man could’ve been the 13th disciple! Yet, he refused, for he had great material wealth that he didn’t want to part with.
So Sam… what’s my cross?
Each of our “crosses” are different. Your cross is the thing that God has called you specifically to do. It isn’t something that your parents can do. It isn’t something that your friends or teachers can do. As we just saw, the cross that was given to Jonah was wildly different than the cross that was given to the rich young ruler. Both Jonah and the rich young ruler had to talk to the same person to get their crosses though, God.
That is how you find yours. It’s simple. There are just two requirements.
- You must be saved. There’s no point in asking God to show you your cross when you haven’t even accepted Him as Lord of your life. You’re still stuck at the refuse to follow the Lord part that we talked about a few minutes ago. You have to accept Jesus first. You have to admit and commit. Admit that Jesus is Lord and there will never be another, asking Him for forgiveness. Then, Commit to living your life for Him, forsaking your sin at His feet.
- Secondly, you must make it a matter of DAILY prayer. If you are one who is saved. If you are one who is worthy, having accepted Jesus as Lord of your heart. Then you must make it a daily prayer in your life. God show me my cross. Help me to bear it to Your honor and glory.
If you earnestly seek the Lord, He will make himself known to you. He will make your cross known to you. Then, he will give you the strength to bear it as his disciple. He loves us. He will not leave us to bear it alone.
Bear your cross, come after me.
Let’s read Luke 14:27
27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27
We now know that your cross is the thing that God has specifically called you to do. So what does it mean to bear it?
First… we need to understand what the word bear means. The word there means to carry and support.
- There is a responsibility that God wants you to carry
- There is a mission that God wants you to support.
Think about this life like it is a battle. The spiritual battle between good and evil, and you are a soldier in God’s army. All soldiers have responsibilities that they have to carry. It rests on them to make sure that a specific task gets done. No one else can do it.
A few weeks ago, I took a trip with my wife to go tour the Yorktown USS over in Mt Pleasant, SC.
It’s a HUGE ship that was chock-full of all kinds of cool artifacts, plaques, ships, planes, and pictures. There were some creepy mannequins too (but that’s a story for a different day). I’m a big reader, while my wife is more of a picture person. So she was dragging me through all the various rooms, and I was catching bits and pieces of the stories on all the plaques as we went. There was one story that stuck out to me specifically though.
On 30 March 1945, Yorktown and the other carriers of her task group began to concentrate solely on the island of Okinawa and its surrounding islets. For two days, they pounded the island in softening-up strikes. On 1 April, the assault troops stormed ashore; and, for almost six weeks, she sent her planes to the island to provide direct support for the troops operating ashore. About every three days, she retired to the east to conduct fueling rendezvous or to rearm and re-provision.
The only exception to that routine came on 7 April when it was discovered that a Japanese task force built around the elusive battleship Yamato ( biggest, heaviest battleship ever constructed ) was steaming south for one last, desperate, offensive. Yorktown and the other carriers quickly launched strikes to attack that valued target. Air Group 9 aviators claimed several torpedo hits on Yamato just before the battleship exploded and sank. The pilots also made strafing runs on the escorting destroyers and claimed to have left one afire in a sinking condition. At the conclusion of that action, Yorktown and her planes resumed their support for the troops on Okinawa.
Here’s what I was thinking about…
If the guy in the radio room didn’t do his job to decode the message from the command center, then the guy at the helm would have no idea where to turn the ship to go next. The planes would’ve had no idea which target to attach. Each person had specific responsibilities that no one else on the boat had.
Still, everyone on the boat had the same mission to support. Everyone was working on taking down the Yamato.
When you are bearing your cross, there is a responsibility in this life that God reveals to you as you seek after him through prayer and reading his Word. It is the ability or job that God has given you to do. No one else. Maybe it literally is a specific job. Or maybe it’s simply a person God has placed in your life that only you can reach. This is your responsibility. You have to be the one to carry it. Then, carrying this responsibility, there is a mission that God wants you to support. It could be the mission in your high school. It could be the mission in your church, it could be the mission in your city, or your workplace. You might find there are people that God has also called to be a part of that same mission with you, even if they are bearing different crosses.
We’re not just supposed to bear those crosses though. we’re also supposed, as Jesus says, “come after me“
Sometimes we try to come BEFORE God, don’t we? We try to go on ahead and do what we want and give him a recap. We put our wants and our desires ahead of God. We’re not chasing after Him. We’re not trying to follow Him. We’re leaving Him in the dust, hoping that somewhere down the line He’ll catch up with us. This is the wrong approach.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:1-2
We are supposed to present our bodies to the Lord. This means that what we do physically should be to God’s glory. We are to renew our minds. This means that the things that we think on should be to God’s glory. We should hold our faith in Him first and foremost in our lives.
You can see my body, but you can’t see my mind. In the same way, we should be glorifying God with the parts of us that other people can see and the parts of us that only us and God know about. Both the inward and the outward. When we do this, we will be doing as we should by coming after God. We will be looking to Him for guidance and direction. We will be better honoring Him and living our lives for Him. THIS is how we bear our cross effectively.
