"And (Jesus) said to all, 'if anyone would come after me, let him deny homself and take up his cross daily and follow me." - Luke 9:23

An Lent [concludes] this month, we need to recall that Jesus offers us many things.  He offers us guidance, comfort, and eternal life.  However, above all, He offers us the opportunity to be His disciples.  He says that being His dsiciple invloves self-denial, taking up our cross and following Him.  This was a very important teaching to Jesus.  When He commissioned His disciples and sent them out on their first mission, part of His instructions to them was to take up their cross (Matthew 10:1-7,34-38).  It was a message He would repeat over and over again (see Matthew 16:21-28; Mark 8:34-37; Like 14:25-27; 17:33 and John 12:25-26).

Jesus said that if anyone would choose to follow Him as a disciple, then they needed to deny themselves.  Self-denial is more than giving up chocolate for Lent.  It means saying "no" to my selfish desires and "yes" to God.  It is not something we do for a week or forty days, but something we do daily.  Our lives are to be lived each day under the demands of Jesus himself.  As Christian disciples, we are called to sacrifice personal ambition, personal comfort and to place Jesus above all else.  Iy is a call to determine what our true values are as we face the choice between allegiance to Jesus or to the world.  There is no room for a false self-centered prosperity gospel in these words.  Jesus didn not call us to be disciples in order to make our lives easy or to line our pockets with wealth.  He called us to be disciples to make us holy and productive in His kingdom.  He called us to abandon self without hesitation.  It was self-seeking that caused Satan's fall, and this has been at the heart of all sinning ever since.  True discipleship is always on God's terms, not ours.  Jesus is to be so precious to us that absolutely nothing should be allowed to come before Him.

He also told us we are to take up our cross.  We hear people who are going through a difficult situation say, "That's my cross to bear."  However, Biblical cross bearing is not suffering in general.  It is not the pain of an ingrown toenail or a nagging mother-in-law.  It is what we experience because of our faithfulness to Jesus.  The cross was not a spiritual pious symbol in Jesus' day.  The people Jesus spoke to had seen condemned criminals staggering under the load of their crosses.  A few years before Jesus uttered these words, up to 2,000 people were crucified along the roads to Galilee.  Only condemned criminals carried their crosses.  To take up our cross is to be willing to die for Jesus.

Finally, Jesus said we are to do this in order to follow Him.  Jesus is more than someone to respect; He is someone we are called to emulate.  Discipleship means complete identification with our Master.  We are to be prepared to say goodbye to self, take up our cross and proceed wherever He may lead us.  We do not want to be like the rich young man whe came to Jesus and was told to sell all, only to find our call to discipleship to be more than we are willing to accept.

Jim Elliot, a Baptist missionary, died on January 8, 1956, along the banks of the Curaray River in Ecuador while trying to make conduct with the Aucas Indians.  I remember the pictures in Life Magazine of their bodies floating in the river where the Indians had killed them.  Before he left for Ecuador, Jim made this statement; "He is no fool who gives what he cannont keep (earthly life) to gain that which he cannot lose (eternal life)."  May our testimony be "I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And, the life I now lives in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).