Live Passionately
We’re probably all familiar with the Great Commission “… go and make disciples of all nations …” (Matthew 28:19). But if we’re going to “make disciples” of others, we need to be sure we’re disciples ourselves. There were different times when Jesus ‘spelt out’ what becoming His disciple meant. One is recorded in Luke 14:27 “And anyone who does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” The only time someone in Jesus’ day ‘carried their own cross’ was when they were about to be executed. Anyone judged by the Roman authorities to have committed a crime worthy of death was forced to carry probably just the heavy top bar of a cross through the streets. When they reached the place of their death, the top bar would be fixed to another plank and the victim nailed to each. Death could take anything from 12 to 24 hours and was finally due to asphyxiation.
If living as a true disciple of Christ means we have to die, should we spend the rest of our lives putting ourselves to death? In Luke 14:27 quoted above, Jesus said discipleship requires death to self (carrying our own cross) and following Him. These are two sides to the one coin and can never be separated. If you make ‘following Him’ your number one passion, you will increasingly experience death to self. You won’t have to try to do it; it will just happen. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus “for the joy set before him endured the cross …” He was thinking far more of what would follow than the agony of what He was about to endure. We need to do the same. Follow Jesus with all your heart. Live passionately for Him as if nothing else in this life really matters, and you’ll see your old, sin-stained ways begin to change.
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