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What would you think if I showed you some burdensome, heavy, rough and awkward object of torture and pain, told you to carry said object up a hill where I would then attach you to it in the most painful of manner so I could watch you die a slow and humiliating death? Would you carry it? You know someone’s done this before and he said all of us must do the same… at least, if we’re going to follow him.

Being Christ’s disciple includes carrying your own cross.

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.  {Luke 9:23-24}

I’ve never made the common mistake of assuming everything in my life (now that I believe in Christ) will be easy. From the start, I’ve gathered there are some elements to the Christian life involving difficulty or trial (ah, the catchall word = “trial”). My understanding of these trials, however, has lacked a connection with the sufferings of Jesus. Having lived thirty years in anonymity without constant fear or threat to his life (as far as we know), Jesus stepped out from this ordinary existence into the extraordinary, revolutionary, and missional lifestyle of his final three years. You can believe (look at the Gospels, near the end) it wasn’t all roses, talk show gigs, and conference-speaking engagements. Jesus laid down his life for all who would come and find the gift worth having (and even those who would refuse it). Doing so included even the daunting task of carrying his own instrument of execution. Being Jesus killed Jesus. What do you think happens to his followers?

Here is the truth. Living the alternative life Christ makes available under his management of reality will inevitably put us in the way of danger. I’ve always known this. But I’ve also always minimized it. Minimalism is a veiled form of denial. It causes me to say things like, God would never want me to live there because it’s unsafe - or - nothing bad will happen to me because I am doing God’s work when in reality it may be God’s intention (or concession) to reveal his powerful love through me in an unsafe place or cultivate deep-rooted, effectual change in my heart and soul through some bad stuff.

There are many Christ-followers who have come before us and found their life not only in ethereal experiences of beauty (conversion, baptism, indwelling of the Spirit, Jason Upton concert) but also in the ugly, unwanted hurts (death, loss, sickness, persecution, betrayal, mugging). Some who have suffered include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abraham Bentar, The Apostle Paul, Mother Theresa and many more around the world who live in the places where people do what they must without the luxury of doing as they please. Come to think of it, this may be why so much of what we call Christianity here in the West is shallow and uninspiring - we have removed Christ from his sufferings - made him a consultant, given him a desk and a Bluetooth, and done our best to fit his life into ours.

Self-preservation tactics are, in essence, selfishness. These people (and many others like them) chose to suffer and live with danger to eternally etch the name of Christ onto the hard concrete of their world. We also, must be willing to take up and carry with courage the things that could kill us. Just as Christ’s life, mission, and meaning were leveraged for all time on a cross - our ministry will be made real and far-reaching when we are willing to die to make it so - and even help bear the load.

• Do certain dangers deter you from the thing God is moving you to do right now?
• Is there a limit to the suffering you will endure for the Gospel - for Jesus?
• What burden do you carry today? Can you see a way for it to bring redemption to someone else?
• Will you join me in repenting of choosing comfort over justice and love and asking God to do His will regardless of what happens to us?
  (We are all falling short of Christ’s selfless sacrifice here.)