What Cross-Carrying Means for Some and Doesn’t Mean for Others
Having periods of rest, where things seem easy, where ministry is going well, where life is not hectic is not, of itself, a sign of unfaithfulness. Sometimes I think in all the talk of cross-carrying we forget that Jesus does care about us and isn’t out to just make our lives miserable all the time.
Jesus famously called his followers to take up their cross. I think this is a message that much of the evangelical church needs to hear. Many of us are content with our comfort and seem to think cross carrying is designed to be super easy. We need to reckon with what Jesus has to say about that seriously.
For too long, the church has been driven by a beguiling functional god of comfort. We seem to think that when Jesus says take up your cross and follow me, we think he means move to a nice area, get a house, attend church a couple of times on a Sunday, have some kids, get them into university, graduate jobs and retire comfortably. I don’t think that is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke about cross-carrying, but it seems to be the broad plan of many in the church.
When there is a tendency like that – and it is widespread – the usual thing to do is highlight it and talk about it. So, we will get a some talk from certain quarters – often quarter like mine – that seek to afflict the comfortable a little. We want to shake them out of their comfort and encourage them towards the faithfulness that Jesus calls them to, cross-carrying and all. The problem with doing this is that some hear things that were not intended nor necessarily meant for their ears.
Sometimes it means, rather than afflicting the comfortable, we accidentally end up afflicting the afflicted. People who are already doing some significant cross-carrying start to feel “got at” or even more guilty because they hear voices speaking about many folk not doing so much carrying of crosses. It needs to be said that those who are carrying significant crosses already – and being quite faithful to Jesus as they do it and are not bowing out of his commands for the sake of their own comfort – are not the ones in view here.
It needs to be remembered in these sorts of conversations that we are calling those who could come, but won’t come, and challenging the frankly often lame reasons they content themselves not to do so. We are not discounting the reasons many might have for legitimately staying where they are. We are simply saying it can’t be right that nobody is called to harder callings. It equally cannot be the case that Jesus calls most people to the easiest and nicest of places en masse. Even if there are good and proper reasons to stay where you are – faithful, godly reasons – we are simply asking that the question is asked honestly. It is those who won’t even consider the question, who quickly dismiss any possibility without proper consideration, that we are often speaking to.
The other way that talk of cross-carrying and faithfulness is often misheard is in the sense that if everything is not extremely difficult for you all the time, you must be doing something wrong. Kind of like an inverse prosperity gospel that came out of Yorkshire or Scotland rather than America. A attitude that suggests you are only really doing right if you are properly suffering for it. If you were really being faithful, everything would be hard and miserable all the time. Then you would know you are doing right for the Lord.
I do think Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
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God Loves Cliff-Hangers
GK Chesterton once wrote on why things happen this way: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” We have a god who knows the way out of the grave. The cross was a place of total and utter disaster for the followers of Christ. That was the mark of a defeated king. But it was only through the cross that this King would conquer the grave.
The Apostle Paul writes in II Cor. 1 about a time when he and his colleagues experienced a certain degree of affliction in Asia. It got so bad that they despaired of life itself. What was the purpose of all this? It was intended to teach them, yes, even the great Apostle Paul, that he must not rely on himself but on God who raises the dead.
How often do you see this theme repeated throughout Scripture? A man is brought to the precipice and is ready to plunge to his death only for God to show forth His power and glory through weakness.
You might recall the history of Gideon and his men as they were preparing to face the Midianites. Over the course of Judges 7, the Lord cuts down an army of 22000 men to 300 men. When their clay pots break open, the light streams out, and the scene astonishes the enemy soldiers who then go down to complete and utter defeat. Remember. We have this treasure in clay pots. The treasure of the gospel. So that when we are broken open, the Lord spreads His light to a watching world (II Cor. 4).
You may recall the history of Israel passing through the Red Sea and the mighty armies of Egypt being swallowed up as they came in hot pursuit. You may recall the armies of Sennacherib being destroyed by the angel of the Lord. You may recall the many harrowing and dangerous situations King David found himself in, only to have it proven to him, again and again, that the Lord was fighting for Him and rushing before Him like a mighty wind through the trees (II Sam 5:17-25).
It was only when in prison that the angel came to break Peter out of jail. How many times did Paul and Silas bring men to Christ when in prison?
But think also of Christians throughout history. Athanasius was only 28 years old at the council of Nicaea. His life was marked by accusations of murder and he was exiled 5x. Or Calvin who was exiled from Geneva only a couple years after being commanded by the fiery Farel to take up his work there. In the face of imminent disaster the Lord used these men as earthen vessels to spark the light of Reformation, when they were smashed and broken open.
GK Chesterton once wrote on why things happen this way: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” We have a god who knows the way out of the grave. The cross was a place of total and utter disaster for the followers of Christ. That was the mark of a defeated king. But it was only through the cross that this King would conquer the grave. Trudeau and Biden have no power over the grave. But Jesus does.
And so Christians do not fear in the face of imminent disaster knowing that God loves cliffhangers, knowing that God loves to use all the circumstances of our lives to advance His kingdom. Those imminent disasters are meant to teach us to rely, not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.
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The Scriptures, Christotelic
Jesus had no problem talking for some time, from passage to passage, starting in Genesis, about Himself. In these passages He illustrated that ALL of the Scripture was about Him. If Jesus believed that was true, and if He in fact expressed that it is so, then we are under compulsion to read the Bible in that light. The Scriptures, beginning in Genesis, are Christotelic—intentionally aimed at revealing Christ!
When the forlorn disciples met up with Jesus following His resurrection, it made the short trip from Jerusalem to Emmaus much more pleasant. Before revealing who He was and that indeed the Christ was alive from the dead, Jesus talked with them as a fellow pilgrim in life—but one who had extensive knowledge about the Scriptures. We find this story in Luke 24.
He rebukes them, but more as a human like them who is confounded that these men do not see the truth about the death of Christ three days earlier. He is rebuking them for not reading the Scriptures with understanding, and for being men with weak faith: “Oh foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”
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Revival in the Making
For those of us longing and praying for awakening today, on this side of the greatest renewal in history — the coming of God’s Word incarnate and the pouring out of his Spirit at Pentecost — what might we take away from these remarkable renewals in Scripture? First, God will see to it that his people, in the ups and downs of their spiritual journeys in this sin-sick world, are renewed and revived. Even in our longing and praying for revival is already a great glimmer of God’s sovereign work. Then, second, when the Spirit’s fire comes in power, it falls on the wood of God’s word.
I grew up in a revivalist church in the South. Every few years, we had a “crusade” with special weeknight services and a dynamic, out-of-town speaker. I remember singing “Revive Us Again” as our theme during one of those rallies. I didn’t realize at the time that we were singing Scripture, from Psalm 85:
Will you not revive us again,that your people may rejoice in you? (verse 6)
The history of God’s people, from the first covenant into the new, is a record of various seasons and undulations, corporate backslidings and surprising renewals. Easy as it might be to criticize aspects of the revivalist tradition, something is profoundly right and healthy in the Christian heart that longs for, and prays for, revival — that God’s people would freshly rejoice in him.
In every generation, our sense of the spiritual climate of our times is subjective, yet real. We find ourselves living in days either where true religion seems to be on the rise, or declining. When the tides are rising, we might pray that it become more than it already has. In times of apparent decline, we pray for the tide to turn. Either way, we pray for revival, broadly defined.
But then what do we do next? When our hearts swell with the longing, and with prayers, for God to send corporate renewal to his church, what might we devote our lives to, as we pray and wait?
Revival’s End and Means
An insight right there in Psalm 85, borne out across the Scriptures, gives us a critical and central component of every true revival of genuine religion. Verse 6 asks God for spiritual renewal (“Will you not revive us again . . .”) and clarifies what the heart of that renewal is (“. . . that your people may rejoice in you”). The end, or goal, of biblical revival is God’s people enjoying God, rejoicing in him, having him as our joy of joys.
Then verse 8 gives us a striking glimpse of God’s vital means in bringing about that end of his people rejoicing in him:
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints. (Psalm 85:8)
So, revival begins with God — through his speaking, his voice, his word. Man does not produce true spiritual revival; God does. And the way in which he does so is through his word. When God sends the fire of his Spirit to fall on the hearts of his people in some blessed local or regional renewal, the fire falls on the wood of his word.
Lay the Kindling
Psalm 85 is a precious testimony, but only one — and we have far more evidence across Scripture that God makes himself central in revival through his word. In every lasting renewal of true religion, God makes his own speaking, his own word, to be fundamental and prominent. Psalm 19:7 celebrates that the law of the Lord — his teaching, his word — revives the soul. The Spirit’s flame does not land without the kindling of his word, and so rallying to God’s word is a plain next step for those who long and pray for revival.
The central place of God’s word is pronounced in the revivals of true worship under the prophet Samuel and later under King Josiah. Samuel’s ministry begins with the acknowledgment that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days” (1 Samuel 3:1). So enter the young prophet, with God’s revealing himself “by the word,” and God’s word coming to all Israel through Samuel’s ministry (1 Samuel 3:19–4:1).
So too with Josiah, who became king in his youth, and walked in the ways of righteousness, but for years his efforts at reform only went so far, until “Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the Lord given through Moses” (2 Chronicles 34:14). As stunning as it is to us, somehow they had misplaced the Book! Apparently, spiritual dullness had led to neglect, and neglect led to misplacing God’s word. But when the priest and king discovered the Book and read aloud to the people “all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord” (verse 30), then the fire of national renewal fell.
Grant Us Some Reviving
We see the centrality of God’s word in the spiritual renewal of his people yet again (and with special emphasis) in the after-exile revivals under Ezra and Nehemiah.
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