Jesus spoke in Matthew chapter 16:
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”
What are we asked to deny? My “self”, my soulish life. What will replace it? Love of FATHER for mankind. The primary issue to making this commitment is fear, uncertainty, and doubt of the trustworthiness of what Jesus calls “My sake”. The word sake means cause, for the purpose of; in the interest of; in order to achieve or preserve. Jesus told His disciples that His cause was the pathway to life and the glory of FATHER. In essence, Jesus provided us cause and effect of either taking our own path or following Him.
What is my cross to take up? It is very specific to my own history thus none of us can create a set of generic steps to address specific histories of sin and lawlessness each of us has been exposed to in our upbringing.
The ego will sacrifice the long term for the short term every time it has a say in our decision-making. “Self” wants no denial in its way and will sabotage our decisions if given the opportunity.
What will help me discern when my ego is losing ground? Look at the fruit of your decisions and how you look at others. Are you seeing them from the eyes of Love or disdain? Are you drawn to help others or is your sole focus on your own situation?
Finding a quiet, silent place where there is no distraction will allow you to open your ears to what FATHER wants to reveal to you today. Once we begin to quiet our soul, our spirit can hear what FATHER wants to show us today according to HIS priorities. There are issues in our soul which must be resolved, especially in the area of unforgiving. Our initial trust to be nurtured by our family may have been damaged by their actions or lack thereof. Childhood traumas certainly impact the soul of an immature and impressionable child. These acts by others require us to root out hurts from the depths of our soul and finally forgive them for they know not what they do.
As we follow in the footsteps of Jesus and take up our cross, we will finally confront the past hurts and forgive those who have wronged us. As we listen to FATHER and ask HIM to expose those past hurts, HE will cause those remembrances to surface allowing us to finally forgive those acts against us. It may be like peeling an onion but the result will be to jettison those issues from preventing our spiritual walk of fully expressing Love toward others.
“Self” wants to hold on to those deep-seated hurts but we must nail them to our cross once and for all.