"Forty Day Focus on the Cross"

Day Six

I am always amazed at how long a minute seems when I’m warming something up in the microwave, and how short it is when I say, “just one more minute” while lying in bed not wanting to get up.

If you’re waiting for the clock to say it’s time to leave school or work, it drags on. But if you are with someone you love, or doing something you love, you seem to barely begin and it’s time to be finished. If you are looking forward to a vacation or a weekend away, it feels as if the calendar is stuck in the mud; but once you are on that vacation you blink and the days have flown by and quickly disappeared.

Time is constant, of course. But in certain moments of our life it sure doesn’t feel like it.

The first weekend of Lent has come and gone. One week out of 6 will soon be behind us, and the cross will be one week closer. The question for today is: are you?

Are you closer to the cross than you were a few days ago? Is the magnitude of His sacrifice any more real to you today than a week ago? A year ago? Or maybe 10? Each week of life, as we put a Sunday behind us, and a new week before us, it should have in it a resolve to do more, to know more, to study more, to be more than the in the one before. Each day should put behind it a few more steps of the journey of our faith. Each second should be seen as one more second of this life behind us and one more second closer to Home. Each moment that has a concentration on God in it should be another moment of deeper love and devotion to the one whose every thought and every concern of every single day is all about us.

God doesn’t watch the game and momentarily forget about you. He doesn’t get lost in a good book and stop considering us. God doesn’t get sidetracked in His love for us and stop considering what we need. We are always on His mind.

But us? We have to refocus every day, every hour, every moment. We have to remind ourselves of His will constantly. We get so lost and so distracted and so complacent and so selfish. It only takes a second—a little bauble dangled in front of us and we are caught up again in our trivial little lives and its matters, forgetting totally about the intimacy that God craves with us. He never forgets, never wavers. Us? We so seldom find it and we always seem to be wavering back and forth like a tight-rope walker in a gale force wind.

The cross is closer now. The time is drawing near. Are you?

Onward, my friends. Face to the cross, our back to the world. Every second.

"Forty Day Focus on the Cross" Day Five—Valentine’s Day

On the day of love, how can we not study the love of the Cross?

Most everyone knows John 3:16, or has at least knows it’s a very popular scripture in the Bible. It is often called, “the Gospel in a Nutshell”. To paraphrase is so as to emphasize its deep meaning, “God loved every soul He ever made so much that He was willing to let His One and only Son die in our place. And everyone who puts their faith and trust in Him will be saved from an eternity in hell and will be given the gift of eternal life.”

No thought has ever been more meaningful to us. No gift ever greater. No hope more true and penetrating.

But do you know what I John 3:16 is? “By this we know what love is, that Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” Jesus shows us God’s love by willingly walking that road to the cross, by willfully taking OUR cross, the cross we deserve for our sins, and humbly dying the death that we deserve to die. By this He demonstrates God’s love to us.

And since we know what this love is through this demonstration, now we know how to love others in the same way. Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” John says that since we know what true love is through the gift of Jesus, we now know how to truly love others, laying our lives down for them.

Do you see that as a part of carrying your cross? We are told to “deny ourselves, and take up our cross, and follow Him.” I deny myself and I exalt others, I put them and their needs first.

May we make that a part of our daily walk during this journey to the cross: as Jesus took up the cross for you, you should take up the cross for others.

Following Jesus, my friends, always onward. Face to the cross, our back to the world.

"Forty Day Focus on the Cross" Day Four

The Shadow of the Cross

Walking down the road at sunrise or sunset, just as the sun beams over the horizon, the shadows of things around us are very long; and the more prominent the object, the longer the shadow. At midday these same things appear to have almost no shadow at all. But at the beginning or the end of the day, the shadow is huge.

We are on day four of our 40-day walk toward the cross and the tomb. The cross is a long ways from us. And it was for Jesus too. The Raising of Lazarus from the dead is still ahead. There is much teaching and preaching and healing to do between Galilee and Jerusalem of Judea. And the long week of Jesus’ last Passover and all its events are still in the distance. I’m sure the disciples and the others who gather around Jesus and travel with Him weren’t even thinking about it yet. But it was always on Jesus’ mind. I believe it was on His mind from the time He came into this world in a way. I believe He knew His earthly destiny when He was twelve and went to the Passover with His earthly parents and got separated from them, ending up in the temple listening to the elders of the people debate and answering their questions. We see it in how he answered His mother who was frantically looking for Him: “Did you not know I would be about my Father’s business?” Also, from the time He began His ministry His death of the cross was always before Him. He told people in His first messages, “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He knew His purpose here was to bring in the Kingdom by His death on the cross. He knew what He came to do, and where He would do it. That shadow was long, and it loomed over Him even as the journey began.

What about you? Does the shadow of the cross darken your path? Can you see the light shining far ahead of you, that light that dawns in the hearts of all men, but that has to shine over the cross as well? Even from this distance that shadow, the shadow of the cross, should loom over all. It should be a daily reminder of the great love of God and the gracious gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. And it should be a directional beacon, of sorts, that keeps our eyes, and our hearts, and our feet pointed to the cross, which points us Home.

Keep your eyes on Jesus, my friends. Onward. Face to the cross, our back to the world.

"Forty Day Focus on the Cross" Day Three

Did Jesus HAVE TO walk that road toward the cross?

No. He had a choice too.

Jesus said in John 10:18 (Good News Bible), “No one takes my life away from me. I give it up of my own free will. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it back. This is what my Father has commanded me to do." Jesus had a choice. He even said in the Garden of Gethsemane that He had a choice; but He chose to do God’s will, not His own. Jesus chose the cross—the pain, the agony, the ridicule, the sheer torture that awaited Him there—and He also chose to carry your sins and mine, the weight of every sin of every being who has ever lived and wash it away with His own spilled blood.

It could have been different. He could have said, “No, I’m not going to pay for them.” How different everything would be if He had. Lord, thank You it didn’t happen that way.

God could have made this work totally different as well. He has the ability to do everything, He could have chosen differently. He could have said, “Oh well—your life is ruined by sin and that separates us eternally—but forget it. Just come on in.” He COULD have. But that would be so totally against His divine nature. He is a God of love, but He is also a God of justice. God is always fair. Sin costs, and someone, something must pay. God would not be God if He compromised His perfect integrity and His divine nature.

He could have also said, “You know what—you all are messed up, and I don’t want to fix you.” And He could have wadded us up and thrown us out like the clay from a messed-up art project—throw it away and start over. But again that goes against His divine nature. He IS a God of justice, and He is also the God of second chances, the God of mercy and grace and forgiveness and love. Praise the One who loves the unlovable, saves the unsaveable, forgives the unforgivable!

So, now you have a choice. Do you take up your cross and follow Him to Calvary? Do you deny yourself? Do you crucify the old man of sin? Do you put to death the things of this flesh? Do you choose to live this life filled with the abundance that God has in store? Each step takes me higher, each mile gets me closer. The cross pays the price; the tomb leads me Home.

Again, my friends, onward. Face to the cross, our back to the world. Give it all. You know He did.

"Forty Day Focus on the Cross" Day Two

After my devotion yesterday, a friend raised the question, “Is giving up something for lent ‘enough’?” The point of his question was that often all we are doing is giving up a small thing that is only an inconvenience to us, and not a true sacrifice; that often people are looking to do as little as they can, instead of seeking to do the most they can.

I don’t want to belittle anyone’s effort to focus more on the cross. The things that many of us give up are not huge sacrifices, or course. It is merely a symbol, a small effort to use something in our day and in our life to remind us off and on that the next 39 days need more focus on what Jesus is going to do for us on the cross, and where He leads us as He walks out of that tomb. Truthfully, I would love to spend the whole 40 days in a desert, no phone, no TV, no comforts, sleeping on the ground, going without food, and spending every moment of that time meditating on His Word and letting every pain I feel remind me of His sacrifice.

But I can’t do that, most of us can’t.

And even if I could, it wouldn’t be enough.

As the old gospel song says,
“It wouldn’t be enough, no it wouldn’t be enough,
To buy one splinter of the tree that Jesus died on.
And it couldn’t pay the price for one single drop of blood
That was shed for my salvation.”

Does that mean that I shouldn’t seek to be more? Higher? Deeper? Stronger? That I shouldn’t desire to give more? Serve more? Study more? Pray more? Love more? Worship more? Meditate more? LIVE more?

Our little symbols, our little rituals HAVE to be only a part of what our complete devotion to God is. The weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper is not the only step taken in your Christian walk. Your baptism isn’t the “finish line” or as some say, “the completion of our obedience”. By no means. Your offering, or your daily devotional reading, or a prayer or two in the morning on your way out the door, or your attendance at Sunday School, or Bible study, or even your weekly involvement in worship with the Body of believers are not the totality of your Christian walk. No one piece of religious duty comprises all that we are or are supposed to be in Christ. Every step leads toward Home. But a journey of a thousand miles does not end at the end of your driveway. You can’t get there without the first 30 feet, but you can’t get there without the last 30 feet either, or any foot or yard or mile in between.

Onward, friends. Face to the cross, our back to the world. Keep going.

"Forty Day Focus on the Cross" Day One—Ash Wednesday

Today friends of mine everywhere will “give up something for Lent”.

A friend asked me yesterday whether that was a good thing, is it a right practice to participate in Lent. I told her that there was nothing anti-scriptural about Lent or its observance, and that giving up something for this 40-day season was a good thing IF PRACTICED WITH THE RIGHT PURPOSE.

Doing anything just to do it is ludicrous. Shining bells that no one ever rings; sweating to shovel the snow from a walk where no one goes; planning and setting up games no one will ever play; buying clothes or shoes you will never wear; turning on the TV when no one is watching it.

If you don’t know the reason why you do something, don’t waste your time. Either figure out the reason or don’t do it.

Why do you “give up something for Lent”? Why do you rob yourself of the flavor or the pleasure? Why do you go through the constant reminder and the constant frustration of “doing without”? Honestly, if it’s just because I’m SUPPOSED TO do it, then stop wasting your time and giving yourself the headache.

On the other hand, if you are truly using it to remind you of the sacrifice that Christ made on your behalf, to reemphasize in your life the willingness He had to face the pain, to die that death, to carry that sin—if you are making a small sacrifice to focus your heart and your mind on His cross, and His path to Calvary, and His love and grace shown through those nails and those thorns and through that beating and that cursing, and that shunning, and that ridicule, then maybe you are on the right track.

Every time you say, “I can’t have that,” then add to it this phrase: “Oh well. He gave up SO much for me it is my honor to give up something for Him.” May your temporary and minute struggle and frustration focus your heart and your mind on the Cross that lies 40 days ahead, and the empty tomb that paved that way to eternity.

Onward, friends. Face to the cross, our back to the world.

HEY!  I'm going to give this a try.  Don't even really know what I'm going to do with this, but I think it will be a fun adventure.