Tuesday, May 21, 2013

The end of the natural...


The Cross we preach to others should first crucify us.
To proclaim the Cross is relatively easy, but to be a crucified person preaching the Cross is not so easy.
A person who desires to preach the Cross should adopt the way of the Cross.
So often what we preach is indeed the Cross; but our attitudes, our words, and our feelings do not seem to bear witness to what we preach. This is because much of the preaching of the Cross is not done in the Spirit of the Cross. Only a crucified person preaches the message of the Cross in the spirit of the Cross.
How can we give to other people what we ourselves do not have? Unless the Cross becomes our life, we cannot impart that life to others. The Lord Jesus was lifted up on the cross for the sake of giving spiritual life to men. If we desire to cause people to have spiritual life, we too, must be lifted up on the cross so that the Holy Spirit may flow out of us as well. It is only as the Cross is allowed to burn into our own hearts through the fire of sufferings and adversities that we will be able to see it reproduced in the hearts of other people. Whatever work is done by depending on our natural life is in vain, but work performed in the power of supernatural life bears much fruit. Death is the indispensable process of fruit-bearing. In fact, death is the only way to bear fruit

 (John 12:24-25 ERV)
24 Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat drops into the soil and dies,
it remains a single grain, but if it dies, [then] it will produce many grains.
25 The person who loves his [earthly] life will [eventually] lose it [forever],
but the person who hates his life in this world will retain never ending life.