SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/1/2022 9:56 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The
Principle”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:24
Message of the
verse: “24
Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
I have been writing Spiritual Diaries for many, many
years and one of the things that continues to be amazing to me is how different
it is when looking at certain verses where it takes a long time to get through
them, while at other times it may only take one SD to go through a number of
verses in a chapter. I have to say that
since I have begun my study of the Bible which began some 48+ years ago that I
have kind of gone from an air plane look at the Bible to getting down and
digging into the Bible kind of like digging for gold in a gold mine. I have a missionary friend who died a while
ago and I use to send him some of my Spiritual diaries and he would write back
to me and say keep on sending those nuggets of gold to me. When I first started seriously in studying
the Word of God as I began to study the entire Bible I would use helps from Dr.
Warren Wiersbe who was a very great teacher and preacher and also a writer as
he had commentaries on all 66 books of the Bible. Dr. Wiersbe would always put the cookies on
the shelf where you could reach them. It took me 25 years to get through the entire study of the Bible and once I got done
I began to once again go through the different books of the New Testament, and
at that time I began to use for my help the commentaries of John
MacArthur. I think that when MacArthur
began his ministry that it was his goal to go through each book of the New
Testament which took him many, many years.
I know it took him 10 years to go through the gospel of Luke, and then
after that he began his last book of the New Testament, the book of Mark. After that he began to look again at the
gospel of John and then the book of Acts.
I listen to many of his sermons because at this stage of may walk with
the Lord I want to dig deeper into the Word of God and so an example of that is
all the time we are spending on Matthew 16:24 which is a very important verse in
the New Testament and I have to say that I have been learning a lot from this
one particular verse. We begin today by
looking at the second requirement of discipleship which is to take up one’s
cross and I hope all who read this will learn some things that I have learned
from this as it is a bit different than what I had thought taking up one’s
cross was about. By the way in Luke’s
gospel he adds the words daily to taking up one’s cross.
As mentioned this idea of taking up
one’s cross has some profound meaning, and it must be understood. MacArthur writes “Taking up one’s cross is
not some mystical level of selfless ‘deeper spiritual life’ that only the
religious elite can hope to achieve. Nor
is it the common trials and hardships that all persons experience sometime in
life. A cross is not having an unsaved
husband, nagging wife, or domineering mother-in-law nor is it having a physical
handicap or suffering from an incurable disease. To take up one’s cross is simply to be willing
to pay any price for Christ’s sake. It
is the willingness to endure shame, embarrassment, reproach, rejection,
persecution, and even martyrdom for His sake.”
I will close this SD with a story
about willingness which I heard from the sermon on this section. Back in the days when there were slaves in
our country there was a black slave who was so full of the joy of the Lord that
his master would come to him and ask him how he could be so joyful, so
happy. The man told him that his joy
came from the Lord, and so the master asks him how to get it. The slave told him to put on his white suit
and come work in the mud with him. Well
this was not something that he was willing to do. Later on the same conversation came up as he
asked the slave how he could get what he had.
“Come down here with your white suit on and work with me in the
mud. Same result. Still later on this man really wanted to have
what this slave had and so the conversation came about the third time, with the
same answer. The master finally said ok
I will do that to which the slave said that as long as he was willing to do it
that he did not have to do it. Believers
may never have to endure shame, embarrassment, reproach, rejection,
persecution, and even martyrdom for the sake of the cross but they must be
willing to do it.
In 1974 when I became a believer in
Jesus Christ I would listen to sermons by Hal Lindsey who was famous for
writing books on the end times, state that even back in 1974 that the tide was
changing in our country and one day he felt that persecution would come to the
land of the free and the home of the brave.
He is very close to being right, as there is some persecution beginning
in our country and we as believers must be willing to go through it for the
cross of Christ as we take up our cross daily and follow the Lord. Satan is certainly behind this movement as he
always is behind this kind of movement.
I have good news and bad news for those who are doing these kinds of
things to our country. The good news is
that they will win. The bad news is that
they will win as in the end they will face the wrath of God at the Great White
Throne Judgment and then be sent into hell if they had not realized their need
for the Savior before their death.
10/1/2022 10:28
AM
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