friday october 29 2010

{count the cost}
dear candice,
i miss you so much. your big blue eyes, your carefree spirit in a sarcastic world. you are such a beautiful picture of God. you mean so much to me. i will never forget about you.
so in church, we have been talking about discipleship. for a few weeks, we have been talking about Gods cammand to us and what we need to go in order to be disciples. a few weeks ago, we talked about counting the cost of discipleship. Jesus tells us ing Matthew and Luke that we have to take up our cross and follow Jesus. wen the Gospels were writen, "taking up your cross" ment dragging a wodden cross through a city for public humiliation and then being crucified on it. so what does that look like today? we need to aknowledge God in front of our peers. in Matthew 10:32-33, Jesus says, "whoever aknowledges Me in front of men, I will aknowedge in front of My Father; but whoever denies Me in front of men, I will deny in front of My Father."
so taking up your cross today doesnt just mean  not denying Him, but it means aknowledging Him. testifing the good hand of the Lord, sharing the Good News. if you were carrying your cross through town, its not like you could hide behind it or anything.
then you have to think about the fact that you are dragging a cross around town doesnt mean you are showing off how you stand up for what you believe, it means you are about to be killed because of what you believe. real death for real life. its a hard thing to think about, but its something we have to think about in order to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
if Jesus died for all of us, it only makes sense that we give up all of our stuff (including our lives), and give it all to God.
so here we go. lets go and give it all back to Him.
lets go take up our crosses.
i love you.
love,
sara