Topic: TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW CHRIST – Church of God Mission International – Above Only Daily Devotional 4 September  2023

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ABOVE ONLY DAILY DEVOTIONAL

BY: ARCHBISHOP M. E. BENSON IDAHOSA

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2023

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS AND FOLLOW CHRIST

Matthew 16:24 (CEV, TPT)

Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me. *Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely reject and disown your own life. And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to my ways.

In our study yesterday, we saw what Jesus meant by saying we have to deny ourselves and we saw that we can only do it because we died with Him on the Cross.

Also Read: Open Heaven 4 September  2023  A GREATER PORTION 

When Jesus asks us to take up our cross and follow Him, He is asking us to embrace all that He did for us on the Cross as our reality and to also allow this reality to control and influence every area of our lives. We don’t actually have a cross of our own because we are dead and we died with Him on His Cross. Jesus wants us to take His Cross as our own. He wants us to join Him in His experience of the Cross by personalizing what He did for us on the Cross by the help of the Spirit.

This is what Paul was referring to when he said, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death,” (Phil.3:10). The New International Version says, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”. The only way we can become like Christ in His death is by the help of the Spirit as we focus on Christ and the revelation of His death, (2Cor.3:18). When you are filling yourself with the revelation of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection and this revelation is transforming and influencing the way you’re living your life, you are taking up your cross (which is actually His Cross) and you are following Christ.

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, please help me embrace the Cross of Christ as my own and let the truth of the Cross influence and control my life

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