Taking up our crosses daily means that each believer is pulled in by the most challenging voice of God to go where it is not easy. This is always a challenge to even the bravest of hearts. The church is full of we good people who so often believe that someone else would better handle the task at hand.
How would I know? I lived there...even as the preacher. And may I share that being around successful people doesn't help. Observing the successes of others did not loosen me from my self-created, tied-down, firmly anchored excuses as to why I couldn't. No, their many reports of success confirmed in my heart that I wasn't good enough after all.
In my early days, to hear Marvin Phillips (now my hero and dear friend) tell the crowds how we could do this was translated by me, I'll never be able to do anything as good as Marvin. He doesn't get it. I'm not like him.
But then I learned something from the Bible. I learned that power is perfected in weakness (which included my weakness). My friend, weakness is not an excusing verification permitting us to withdraw, to hedge, or to hide. It is the gun powder that shoots us into varying settings when we are shaking in our boots....but....believing God will keep His vow to use us anyway.
I think that all of the stuff in the kingdom that gives us life has a long trail of both the rugged and the uncomfortable. If we develop a faith without this in mind, we may be short-sheeting the Cross for it is from this pertinent stage that we all make our presentations. This is anything but easy; anything but comfortable. This often scares me for I live thinking that I am not enough. But it is Him who is enough.
Chuck Swindoll gave me two words about thirty years ago when I was crying on his shoulder about my struggle in dealing with multiple factions within one congregation. I was confused and stumped. He said, Don't flinch. I say to you when you are not sure of the last comment received or the next step you take, Don't flinch. God knows how to run this work. One of our tasks is the measure of the call of the Cross....and then pick it up...and then begin to follow.
It may not be easy; but it will work.
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