UNAVOIDABLE CROSS

Breakthrough | Freedom | Dominion.

Luke 9:23 KJV,

“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”.

The word CROSS means “self-denial”. The cross means turning away from the sinful pleasures that this world has to offer and rather sacrificing your whole being into serving a higher purpose which is God.

A cross requires a person’s whole strength, dedication and focus to carry it to its destination. A cross requires a person’s whole being, body soul and spirit in order to bare it. That’s why the Bible says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” Matthew 22:37. This means, following the Lord requires us giving the Lord all our heart, not part of our heart. In Matthew 19:27, Peter the disciples said a very profound statement, “We have left everything to follow you”.

This means that the disciples left all that this world had to offer (sinful desires and pleasures of this world) and they made a conscious decision to follow the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully.

When you give God all your heart and you allow God’s grace to overshadow every part of your being, you will begin to reap the full benefits of God’s divine blessing. Satan will not be able to rob you of your spiritual inheritance and privilege as he often does to those who live partially for God.

The cross requires total surrender, dedication, passion and service. Before Jesus attempted to carry His cross, He surrendered. He said, “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). He was dedicated, He was focused on the task ahead and we must do the same.

We must surrender totally to God’s will in every aspect of our lives because Christ gave us everything He had when He died on the cross. We must give Him everything we have that’s the meaning of picking up our cross and following Jesus. We must die to self in order to see a great resurrection in our lives as we begin to experience a greater power, anointing and victory in our walk with the Lord.

When Jesus walked with the cross on His shoulder as He made His way to “Golgotha the place called skull”, where He was crucified, all the lustful desires for the things of this world left Him as He pressed on to complete the task of dying on the cross. Because He was faithful in bearing His cross, God ensured He was crowned the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Jesus could not avoid the cross, it was necessary. Without the cross, He wouldn’t have been elevated and promoted to be King of Kings. The pathway to a higher resurrected life in the kingdom of God is through the cross. There are no short cuts to the cross, the path is unavoidable.

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23)”.

There is no short cut for anyone who desires to follow the Lord faithfully. The temptation to sin against the Lord is real, even more so when you desire to walk in Holiness. The test to throw away the cross and fall victim to the enticement, wiles and schemes of Satan is real.

We live in a world where people are consistently bombarded with lustful temptations that attract the nature of the flesh. We are in a world which is controlled by Satan who the Bible calls the “god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4)”. A world where people live by sight and not by faith, a world which the Bible’s says is driven by the “lust of the flesh, lust of the eye and pride of life (1 John 2:16)”. A world where Christians are consistently surrounded by temptation. Nevertheless, God says in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear”.

If God strengthen Jesus to carry His cross, and if Jesus is asking us to carry our cross (denying the self from sinning), rest assured that Christ can help us overcome any plot and trap set before us by the enemy of our faith (Satan and his demonic agents).

The door way to a greater resurrected life in God’s kingdom is through the cross and Satan will attempt to keep you away from a life of the cross.

When the cross is avoided, you cannot experience a true supernatural life filled with the glorious presence of the Lord. When the cross is avoided, your flesh dominates your entire being and your spirit becomes dormant, unable to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and know His direct path for your life.

There are three types of death that every believer must go through in order to walk in a greater victory in the Kingdom of God.

The first type of death takes place during Salvation when you first surrender and give your life to Christ. This is when you die to the world of sin and you are made alive again in Christ to live unto righteousness (Romans 6:11). That’s why the Bible says in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”.
The second death takes place during water Baptism where the believer is immersed in water (symbolic of Christ’s death) and raised out of the water (symbolic of Christ’s resurrection). That’s why the Bible says in Colossians 2:12, “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead”.
The third death perhaps is the most difficult where most believers are either ignorant of its process or refuse to acknowledge its existence. Some do not even know that this is a vital process of spiritual growth and part of accelerating into a higher level with God. Jesus said, “if any man must follow me, they must pick up their cross daily (Luke 9:23)”. Apostle Paul understood this revelation when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily”.

Everyone’s cross is different.

Church history tells us, that Peter died on the across which was positioned upside down because he didn’t want to be crucify in the same position as the Lord Jesus as a result of his reverence for Him.

Andrew the disciple died on a cross made in the form of an X shape. Everyone’s cross is different but at the end, it serves the same purpose. It brings death to self and resurrects you again in strength and in the power of the Holy Ghost. Picking up your cross doesn’t mean that you die a physical death, rather it’s dying to your sinful nature.

The deeper the cross, the higher the resurrection. The deeper we die to self, the higher our spiritual life can be elevated, and the power of God is able to work through us mightily to reach others.

God has given the believer His Holy Spirit who is inside of you to empower and enable you to go through the process of dying to self and experiencing the true power and presence of God.

Prayer

Pray that God will strengthen you and reveal the type of cross He wants to you carry. Pray that God will help you to trust Him even more, that if there is a cross for you, then there must a greater purpose as well.

Declaration

I declare, that I am blessed and empowered to bare any burden that the Lord may ask of me because His burden is easy and His yoke is light.

Author: Andrew A. Osei

Recommended: Cross-less life part 1&2, by Andrew A. Osei