"If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross daily, and follow me." - Luke 9:23 NLT
How are you doing on fulfilling this? I find it to be tough stuff. I want to be a follower of Jesus. The best I can be with what God has given me and within what He is calling me to be, but I forget too easily. I readily fall back into myself and old habits. Hopefully you are faring better.
Sacrificial living is supposed to be an everyday thing. A sign that the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived and is present in our lives and the lives of people around us. It means giving up living simply for our own interests. Time to start putting others before us. Typically when I think of living sacrificially, I imagine doing big things all at once - large checks for the poor, cutting out superflous spending, giving up television to read more, giving up recreational reading for spiritual pursuits, and focusing more time on God. Then I find that reality and life intrude upon my "idyllic" picture of the "sacrificial" kind of life.
Steve Sjogren of the Vineyard Church in Cincinnati, OH has a saying, "small things done with great love will change the world." I hope I got that right, if not, it's close enough. When I keep looking at doing big things, I lose track of all the small things I could be doing. Holding doors, greeting people with a smile, doing things around the house when they need to be done (not just when I want to do them), honoring my wife and children, taking a relatively short time each day to connect with God, and simply being present in the current moment instead of always looking toward something in the future. There are many more small things that could be added to the list, but you get the idea. In baseball, frequently it's the team that does the "little things" that wins. Maybe a life full of little kindnesses adds up to more than a life with just one or two great sacrifices.
Jesus says to take up our cross daily and follow Him. So often we think that if we do it once, that's enough. It's an everyday, part of your regular life sort of thing. So is doing the small stuff. Maybe there's still hope for improving my Jesus-kind of habits and letting go of the old me-kind of ones.
Just thinking...
