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Thread: "This is my cross to bear"

  1. #31
    Senior Member Smitty's Avatar
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    There are two kinds of crosses. His and ours. Jesus said that if we were to follow Him, we must take up our cross, not His. It hurts. It cuts into our flesh which is our self. Some will go kicking and screaming, and some will go quietly, but all believers will go, one way or the other. Our Lord's words can't be avoided while seeking a life of comfort and ease. "You can't be My disciple unless you take up your cross and follow Me."
    Do we love the fellowship of His sufferings and being conformed to His death (Phil 3:10)?
    To know Him is to experience the power that flows from union with the living resurrected Christ and to enter into fellowship with His sufferings.
    This would include all hardships to be endured for the cause of Christ. Being conformed to His death defines the experience as one continual dying out to self.
    There is a communion of suffering (tribulation, storms and trials) that every believer shares with Christ, who is able to comfort suffering Christians because He has already experienced the same suffering, yet in a much more higher degree than any of us has ever endured.
    Christ died for the purpose of redeeming sinners, and we can see that Paul had that same mission in a lesser sense.
    He lived and would willingly die to reach sinners with the gospel. Paul's life and death, though not redemptive, were in line with the same purpose as his Lord's.
    It is my opinion that the apostle Paul suffered more than any of his counterparts for the purpose of reaching the lost and establishing New Testament churches.
    "For I will show him how much he must suffer for My name's sake"(Acts 9:16).

    Last edited by Smitty; 09-29-2019 at 04:08 PM.
    If you put God First, you have Him at Last.

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    Ezekiel 33 (10-01-2019)

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