PART 25
THE STAFF AND SWORD MINISTRY
SEPTEMBER 2008
ING CHRI TAKING UP YOUR CROSS by Nancy-TONI Younghrandt Jesus' prayer to the Heavenly Father shortly before His death on the cross in John 17: 2123 was as follows:
"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou y hast sent me. And the glory which thou ga est me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one;..." To accomplish or experience some level of this oneness means we must seek to know Jesus, to be one with Jesus and to be like Jesus in all ways possible. The question then is: how might this be done within us? Well, I believe that once we have accepted Jesus as our Savior, then we should not only make a point to spend time in prayer and abiding getting to know Jesus but we Must also seek to do as He said to His disciples when He told them to den y themselves. take up their cross and follow Him. In Luke 9:23 Jesus further stressed. "... If anv man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross dull', and follow me." — with the emphasis on DAILY. This means that this is going to be a continuous and on-going process in our fives. So then the question could he raised as to just what is our cross'? Is it one fixed thing in or lives or can it have multiple applications? For a long time, I identified our cross as being our sin-life, our self-life to which we must die daily ... and that is accurate to say. However. I have also seen how the Holy Spirit and Jesus have led inc view specific things such as particular trials, burdens, fears and struggles as crosses in my life which I needed to cease struggling with and to surrender to the Will of God. Once I did that, then I came to peaceful terms with God's workings in my life. So, in this article I have the leading to further explain just what it means to deny one's self and to take up our cross, and just how you can apply ____ this teaching in Jesus's in y our life.
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JESUS' EXAMPLE To better understand what Jesus is telling us to do, we must first understand what He did inwardly in His prayer-life when He went to the Cross. Through Scripture we know that He was well informed by the Father of what lay ahead for Him. He knew He would suffer, be crucified and be raised from the dead well before it happened. He knew He was God's only begotten Son and was sent to take on the sin of mankind and to die on our behalf that we
might have life eternal. However, that doesn't mean that He didn't struggle within His soul with the Cross that He knew lay before Him. In Matthew 26:38 Jesus told His disciples, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death..." It goes onto explain that Jesus was in such distress that He went a little farther away from the disciples and fell on His face in prayer — truly an indication of the state He was in. He then prayed to the Father, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt." He then went on to pray this way two more times in which He made in His preference
known but then denied His own will and ultimately yielded to the Father's Will. He was willing to accept God's Will over His own at work in His life. With this in mind, I propose that a `cross' in own daily lives doesn't have to be one that is literally life-threatening and as traumatic as physically being crucified on the cross as Jesus was since He paid the ultimate price for us, but rather our own `cross' could range from being beaten, imprisoned unjustly or martyred to anything in our lives which causes us fear or anxiety, or that we struggle with, resist or feel burdened by. In other words, a cross can be anything to which we need to deny our self-life and self-will and yield to the Will of God. It is basically the willingness to accept God's Will over and instead of our own in any and all circumstances. My experience is that while we may have a willingness to accept God's Will in our lives on a general basis as we give our heart to Jesus, there are still issues, circumstances and challenges that arise in our lives that put that to the test. There comes a time for an active prayer time where we consciously pray to yield a specific situation, fear. trial, or whatever the case the niav be, to Jesus in surrender to His Will and God's Will through Him. Perhaps the clearest way to tell when you're not quite denying or dying to self is if you find you are NOT experiencing what Jesus spoke of in Matthew 11:28-30 when He said: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." So if you are labouring and struggling under some heavy burden then you haven't really given all over to Jesus and His Will for you. As long as we feel the weight of our cross
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JESUS' EXAMPLE continued then it is often our self that is struggling against it or resisting it in some way. Now perhaps some believers think that you should feel the weight and that suffering and struggling is to be part of our walk so that we may suffer in some way as He did, but as you can see, that isn't what Jesus wants for us. He paid the p r ice so we shouldn't have to `labour' and be heavy laden' but rather we should have a peace and rest within our sou] even when we are carrying our cross, even when we are yoked with Jesus.
TRUSTING JESUS AND GOD THE FATHER Upon closer look. I would be remiss if I didn't point our that at the heart of denying yourself and taking up your cross there needs to be a deep love and trust of Jesus and God the Father. After all, you're surrendering to God and His Will and bearing a cross or situation or fear or burden that might very well crush you or overwhelm you or hurt you deeply if you let it go. And yet to really deny one's self, it means facing the worst possible thing which you could imagine and to deny it's power over you and your self-life but rather trusting God and Jesus that — #1: if this is His will for you, then He will bring you through, and — #2: if it is not His will for you. He will remove it entirely and it won't be an issue. Again, denying your self-life means trusting in God and being willing to go through even our worst nightmare IF ... and that is a big IF... that is God's Will for you. We should not presume to know either way but be willing to trust Him no matter what. The funny thing about this is that once you've surrendered, I mean really surrendered your will to God' Will and you know it deep within, it's amazing how liberating that can be. Suddenly the fear is gone and the darkness that once seemed to envelope you is lifted because now you are in God's Hand and He will protect and keep you. It is a sad reality but many times is our own fear of a thing that gives it such power over us and serves to burden us and wear us out. We walk in defeat rather than in victory through Christ Jesus. I found years ago that if I came to God with my fear, acknowledging that I could no longer keep struggling against it, and that if it overpowered me then so be it but I was surrendering it up to God no matter what, that God was more than ready to take it from me. It seems that once I prayed in my heart: "Dear Father, I give up this fear to you. 1/et go of it and if it overwhelms me, that is okay because it will be Your Will and You 'I/ get inc through this. And if it is not Your Will for me, then I pray that You take itfrom me. " — once
I did that, then the Father took the fear and peace took its place.
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CROSSES IN DAILY LIFE Since that time I have found many times in my walk when praying that way freed me from a burden or trouble that I found myself struggling with. To give you an example of how I applied this, I can remember one time was a few years ago when we went through an extensive remodel of the house we are in now before we moved up here to Colville. It had gotten extremely stressful for me as I tried to keep up with what 1 usually do in the ministry and then pack for the upcoming move, make trips to Colville to arrange things with a contractor and make the seemingly endless decisions as to what was need for the new kitchen, two bathrooms and a dining room/great room. Needless to say, there were times I was just plain overwhelmed. Just looking down a solid wall of faucets was mind-boggling enough to get discouraged but when you add to that a desire to want to make the `right' decision and not one we'd regret for years to come, it got to be too much. During all this ti me, I was praying for the Holy Spirit's help but it was difficult to know what was the Spirit of God and what was me. Lastly, I realized I needed to surrender all to Jesus and actually Iet myself be overwhelmed, knowing and trusting in Jesus that He would be there to help me make the decisions I needed to make. I no longer resisted and tried to control what was bombarding me, but to let it happen and then resolve to trust Jesus that He would lead me in the right or best decisions as they were needed. Boy, what a relief to just submit to what was happening and to ride it out with Jesus at the helm. For me, it took a willingness to be overwhelmed, even if it felt like jumping into deep water, because I knew and trusted that I would surface, the darkness would lift and God's light would shine through once again. The other similar time carne after we got Topaz, our then young puppy. At first I thought I could rely on Chuck-JOHNEL to know what to do since he had had puppies and dogs before. Well, unfortunately, he had forgotten what it was like to have a puppy and was often too tied up with work to help. For me. since I had never had a puppy, I really started to struggle as I saw I was falling behind in ministry work and the other things I normally did in trying to potty train and take care of this puppy. Finally, I realized that my cross in this case was actually my old life before this puppy and that the harder I fought to hang onto that old life, the more difficult this new life became. It was then that I went to Jesus in prayer and surrendered to this new life I now had with this puppy and gave up my old one. At this point I sought to see Jesus in the arrival of this new puppy and that He could use this puppy to show me things as He could with any other thing in my life. 1 prayed to surrender my will to God's Will and see Him in that situation; once I did that, things started to smooth out quickly for me. Suddenly I knew the thing . to do was to read up on the subject and as I learned more and applied what was written, we steadily got Topaz trained and peace once again filled our home. Through both of these experiences, in a lot of ways the cross 1 was struggling with the
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CROSSES IN DAILY LIFE continued most was my previous life —the life I had before the impending move and remodeling, and the life I had before Topaz and the things I did with the time I had prior to both of those events. These things of themseIves should not have created a conflict for me nor should they have separated me from Jesus but they did when 1 withdrew into my self-efforts and selfwill. It was when I saw these things as being from God and therefore yielding to Him within those situations that they became more of a j oy than a trial. This, I believe, can be applied in every aspect of your life, especially when it is something new in your lives or something that you may be struggling with in terms of preparation or what may be lying ahead of us as a nation and as it pertains to the events to befall us as part of the Judgment and Wrath of God. No matter how great or small, every circumstance, trial, trouble, illness or burden is an opportunity to draw closer to God and to be yielded to His Will at work in your daily life.
OUR OWN WORST ENEMY So often it turns out that much of the time, we are indeed our own worst enemy. The enemy of our souls, the Devil and his bunch, can certainly trouble us but more often than not, we do a fine job all on our own. When our Iives don't go the way we think they should or we fear what our lives may be like down the road, our own imagination can cause us quite its share of grief. This is where we need to be careful. In our zeal to prepare for what is corning, we can keep track of Jesus' Word, research and study what is going to be happening in the near future, and make the prudent and necessary preparations that we are able to make, but we must always keep coming to Jesus, denying our self-life and taking up our cross and following Him. We need to be willing to endure what ever God has for us down the road without becoming fearful and resistant to the various possibilities nor too over-reliant on our own self-efforts to keep us safe either. As the pace of Judgment quickens and events continue to unfold and progressively get worse, it is increasingly more important for each and every believer and Christian to be found in the center of God's Will for them, personally. After all, every one is different and has different abilities and capabilities. As we look to the times ahead and what we need to do to prepare, and j ust how much an individual can and should do, that in itself will be a cross for most and should be a cross for all. All of us, no matter at what stage in our preparations we are from the little to a lot, we should all be praying, "Not my will, but Thy Will be done. We can have real fears and anxieties about the future that lies ahead of us but in truth,
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OUR OWN WORST ENEMY continued none of us can really know what it will be like exactly. We can picture this or that scenario in our mind, our imaginations, but in all reality we can never really know for sure what will happen in our lives, nor can we prepare for every contingency. So. I would suggest that if you have picture in your mind of some situation which you fear may happen to you in the future or if you are depressed because things are not happening in your life as you believed they would, then now is a great time to take those images and die to them on the cross. Let your self-life go to God. Surrender those images to God, saying, "Father, not my will but
Your Will he done. " If you're facing a fear then you can also pray, "Father, if this not • Your Will fog me, then take it from me. But if it is Your Will for me, then I will trust that You 7/be with me and that You 'II bring me through this. Ipray to be willing to go through anything as long as You 'll he there to see me through. " If you're depressed then you also could pray, "Father, I lift up to You this darkness and surrender my t'ill to You completely. 1 give up to You my heavy bw-den and that my life hasn 't gone as I thought it would. I surrender to You now and am willing to do whatever is Your Will. You will bring me through this and I will walk in Your Light once again.
LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME Lastly, I am led to encourage every reader to remember to live life one day at a time . We're not to live in the past or in a time ahead but to have our eyes and heart fixed on Jesus today, one day at a time.
Yes, we can look ahead and make plans and preparations as is prudent and necessary, but we are not to be living there. We can miss the here and now if we're living in another time. We can miss the Blessings God has for us today if we fret too much about tomorrow or yesterday. It's like what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33-34: "... seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow' shall take thought for the things of itself."
May you find the peace that passes all understanding as you surrender yourself to Jesus and our Heavenly Father, and live your days one at a time. S„ 5cs.,- Low A&,.s.,d - . -'