Greetings and welcome to Living Supernaturally, thank you so much once again for giving us this wonderful opportunity to spend time in God's presence and God's word and a few moments in prayer as well. Today, we'll talk about taking up the cross. Luke chapter 9 and verse 23, ‘whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’ Our friendship with God in Jesus is the greatest relationship on earth and yet, we often are separated by our refusal to submit to God's authority in our lives. Sometimes, we'd rather exercise our will rather than God's will. The spirit of self says, I will do it my way and I will do it the way I desire. Jesus provides a remedy for this disease when He calls us to take up our cross daily. The cross is where we give up all that we are clinging for in this world. The cross is where our self-life is immobilized. This may seem restricting and maybe painful to our selfish ambitions but as we obey the commands of Jesus in faith and in the power of His Spirit, we discover the greatest freedom and the joy given by Him that is unimaginable. It was bad enough for the disciples to hear that Jesus would suffer, be rejected and die on a cross. As He spoke these words, everybody knew what Jesus meant. In the Roman world, before a man died on a cross, he had to carry the cross to the place of execution and when the Romans crucified a criminal, they didn't just hang him on a cross, they first hung a cross on him. Carrying a cross always led to death on a cross. No one carried a cross for fun. The hearers of Jesus didn't need an explanation on the cross, they knew it was an unrelenting instrument of torture, death and humiliation. If someone took up his cross, he never came back, it was a one way journey. Here Jesus said that those who follow Him must voluntarily take up their cross. Jesus denied Himself equal to taking up the cross. The two phrases expressed the same idea, the cross wasn't about self-promotion or self-affirmation. The person carrying the cross knew they couldn't save themselves and that their self was destined to die. Denying yourself means to live as another centered person. Jesus made it clear that He spoke spiritually when He added the word daily. No one could be crucified literally every day. Daily they could have the same attitude as Jesus had. As we take up our cross daily, we enter into God's way of doing things and we are freed from doing things our way. Are we willing to surrender ourselves completely into God's hands? Let's pray, Father, we thank you once again for your word that is so alive and so powerful. Lord, even as we have read today, help us to walk in submission to your will, to deny things of the flesh, to walk in the Spirit. Enable us to be obedient to your word and to live by your word, we thank you, we give you all the praise and glory, in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

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