KEY SCRIPTURE: John 19:17 ISV” Carrying the cross all by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of a Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.”

The Lord said to His disciples during His days of ministry that, if anyone would come after Him, or if anyway would be His disciple, and does not first take up His cross and follow Him, He is not His disciple. This is the very first condition that guarantees one following Him. The Lord demonstrated this very instruction by carrying His cross to be crucified. The idea of one carrying His cross is to accept that you do not live for yourself any longer. It also means you are dead to yourself and that it is the will of God that matters to you. ‘Carrying the cross suggests condemned to death.

No one can effectively serve God until he is dead to himself. God cannot also use a man who is alive to himself. The Lord only works with sacrificed vessels. The Lord said in Luke 9:62 KJV that….” No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God”. Serving or following Jesus for that matter must be done under His terms. Dear brother, if you have not renewed your thinking to align with this approach, then you are still far from knowing Him or being His disciple in the first place.

Christianity is a supernatural life. It is God acting through a man. Apostle Paul declared “I am crucified with Jesus, although I live, yet not I. The life I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me “Gal 2:20. Our call to take up the cross is simply to let the Spirit of Christ take charge and live through us. Weakness in the church of God is when the flesh takes charge. Dear one, you cannot reign in this life, when your natural senses are your master. The senses are servants of the devil if they lead. Keep the senses dead and let the spirit lead. Gal 5:16 KJV “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

I have heard in recent times a call for men to marry more than one, as they argue about the needs of their flesh. Any child of God who submits to this view is allowing his flesh to take charge of him and will be defeated in the life of the Spirit. Jesus said, if you look lustfully at a woman, you have committed adultery with her in your heart. Matt 5:28. The Lord was teaching about maintaining your holiness by keeping to your wife, so you would maintain the one flesh, through that union.

THOUGHT: KEEP THE FLESH DEAD, SO GOD CAN BE STRONG IN YOU, TO REVEAL HIS GLORY IN YOU.

FURTHER STUDIES

Rom 8:13 ISV” For if you live according to human nature, you are going to die, but if by the Spirit you continuously put to death the activities of the body, you will live”.

Gal 5:19-21 ISV” Now the actions of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of anger, quarrels, conflicts, factions, envy, murder, drunkenness, wild partying, and things like that. I am telling you now, as I have told you in the past, that people who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. “