Union with Christ and the Cross

In this article I want to take a look at one of the major implications of what it means to daily take up your cross like Christ admonished us to do.
 
To be more specific He told us to take up our cross daily and follow Him. The implication here is that to truly be able to follow Him we must continuously deny ourselves. That’s what the cross ultimately deals with: our will versus His will. Jesus learned this at Gethsemane.

For we are told that He learned obedience through the things He suffered. This was one of the greatest tests of His life. He passed the test with total obedience to the Father’s will. He did this in spite of what it cost Him.  

The word I want to center in on here is the “daily” aspect of what is mentioned. To even be able to take up our cross there has to be something that is happening on a continuous basis. Daily doesn’t imply some type of special time set aside; it implies all of the time. If this isn’t so it wouldn’t make any sense to say that this was something that was to be done occasionally rather than on a steady, unhindered basis.  To daily take up our cross and deny ourselves means that there must be something happening that allows us to be in continuous fellowship with the Father to even be able to know how to properly follow Him.  

Another way of looking at it is to realize that if we aren’t in continuous fellowship with the Father and Jesus, than how can we even be in the place to know how to deny ourselves? How can we be in the place of even knowing what the cross of Christ is working within us for that moment of any day?  

In other words, if we aren’t in firm, steady communion with Christ and our Father, than there is no way to be able to take up our cross and follow Him.  This is one of the things it means when we read that we are to “pray without ceasing.” It is revealing to us the ongoing fellowship that God expects from all of us and yet gets from so few.  

Remember the words that Jesus spoke while He was on the earth when He unveils to us what eternal life is? He tells us that it is knowing the Father and His son Jesus Christ. That is what eternal life is. That is what eternity is like and will always be like.  

This knowing is to grow into unbroken fellowship with the Lord. This is the life that He came to reveal and call us to. This is why He died that we may once again enter unhindered into His presence and He within us. This is why Paul cried out that we may know Him and the power of His resurrection.  

So to take up the cross that Christ requires of us, we must first be in close union with Him to be able to even do anything on a continuous, daily basis. Do this and the rest will follow.  

You will find as you grow and hunger after Christ that the revelation that we can do nothing without Him, always goes back to deep union with Him. It is something to be experienced, not just read about. We aren’t able to die to ourselves without Christ doing it in us. And to be able to do it within us requires that we pursue and hunger for Him like a deer does for the water.  When we pursue God in this way, then nothing will be impossible for us. Even the task of denying who we are that He may be glorified.