Cullompton Baptist Church


Cullompton Baptist Church
Serving God and the Community

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life
John 3:16(NIV)

 


Minister: Rev. Glen Graham 01884 34077


Dear Friends,

This is the fourth of six reflections on the Easter message.  They have been written by David Runcorn, a friend of mine. 

To request prayer please email me at revglengraham@aol.com

Yours in Christ

Glen and Rowan

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Good Friday Reflections - 4

‘Take up your cross’ - the followers of God

Hymn
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride

Reading
Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? Matt 16.24-26

Reflection
Jesus never hid from his followers what his ministry was leading towards.

He regularly spoke of his coming suffering and cross. For their part his disciples never stopped struggling to accept and make sense of what he was saying.

On one occasion as he told them yet again Peter felt he had heard enough. Suffering, rejection, defeat and being killed are not what should happen to real Messiahs is it? Nothing in the faith they had grown up with prepared them for this either.

He takes Jesus to one side and bluntly rebukes him and tells him he is wrong.

This is startling language.
It is elsewhere a word used of Jesus casting out evil.

But Peter’s response to Jesus may owe more to fear than presumption. For if what Jesus is saying is true then they, his disciples, could be in danger too. Peter expresses what they are all thinking.

Jesus is looking at them all as he interrupts Peter and sharply rebukes him back. "For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

Not only is there no other way for Jesus. The way of the cross is the way of his followers too.

Carrying your cross is the action of someone on the way from their cell to the place of execution. In American prisons, inmates on death row chant ‘dead man walking’ when one of their number makes that last journey.
What life plans, hopes and ambitions make any sense at all in that moment? This is such a tough uncompromising image of faith.

Yet this is the call of Jesus. ‘Take up your cross and follow me’, says Jesus. To take up our cross is to surrender all our own attempts to use life, religion and God for our own ends, needs and purposes.
To take up our cross is to turn from our own attempts to manage and control and secure our own lives. The instinct to do this runs very deep. We are engaging in activity that is powerless to save. We cannot save ourselves.
To take up our cross is to turn to Christ and to surrender to the only gift of life that we can utterly trust and depend in – the life Jesus gives.

The story is told of a man seen late one night searching for something under a streetlight. A passerby stops. ‘Did you lose something here? ‘No, I lost it over other there’, replies the man, pointing into the darkness some distance away, ‘but the light is much better here.’ His folly is plain. He has lost something important and knows it. He is looking hard for it. But he is searching on his own terms and while he does so he has no hope of finding was is lost.

To take up our cross is to set our mind on ‘divine things’, says Jesus.

So this all hinges on God and what he about. All our hope is found here.

The cross is forever the sign of a God who loves, saves, delivers and raise life out of the darkness of what is dead and lost.

Those who are willing to lose their life here, will find it

Where do you connect with these thoughts?
You might pause and keep silence for a few moments.

Prayer
Lord upon the cross
Give us the grace and courage to take up our cross and follow you.
That in losing our lives for your sake We may be brought to new life and
May become signs of your love and your salvation in the world.
We adore you O Christ and we bless you For by your Holy Cross
You have redeemed the world.



Cullompton Baptist Church
High Street, Cullompton, Devon, EX15 1AB
email

 


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