Mon Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

Jesus said:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily…”(Luke 9: 23, ESV)

That doesn’t translate very well to us today. You have to remember that the cross was a symbol of death. Today, Jesus would have said, “Take up the electric-chair” or “Take up the gas chamber.” If you ever saw anybody carrying a cross they were going to die.

When you take up the cross in your life it means you are having a funeral. You put yourself, your ego, your desires, your wants, your ambitions in a casket. You close the top and you bury it. If you are going to follow Jesus, you’ve got to go to your own personal cross, and you’ve got to die to yourself.

Before you think that is too high of a price to pay let me remind you that all Jesus is asking of us is to do for Him what He has done for us. Just before He uttered those words He said this in verses 21-22.

“And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’”

Simply put Jesus died for us and now He asks us to die with Him. We cannot die for Him like He died for us,
but we can die to ourselves so that we can live for Him.

That is exactly what Jesus meant in verse 24.

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:24)

It all comes down to two choices. You can either keep your life for yourself and eventually lose it or you can lose your life to Jesus and eternally keep it.