How We See God:

When Following God Hurts

Galatians 3:3-4

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing?

Gethsemane pic

Philippians 1:9

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake

Among the plastic saints of our times, Jesus has to do all the dying, and all we want is to hear is another sermon about his dying.

-A.W. Tozer

Colossians 3:5-10Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator

Luke 9:23-25

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?

How to Embrace the Cross

1. Invite God to do put your old man to death

2. Humble yourself in repentance, especially in small areas

3. Don’t excuse sin or employ euphemisms4. Yield to God when He brings correction5. Wait for Him to change you

Proverbs 27:6

Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Job 5:17-18

Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal.

Colossians 1:24

Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.

Try as you may, you cannot know God and experience His life without self first being exposed and slain. You cannot join Jesus on His throne without first joining Him upon the cross.

-Francis Frangipane

Philippians 3:10

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

1 Peter 4:1

Therefore, since Christ suffered in the body, arm yourselves also with that same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.