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As I talked with the Lord in the early morning, in my mind's eye I saw a tapestry hung on a wooden pole/rod. The tapestry was a beautiful deep forest green and the threads(fringes)  on the sides and at the end were gold. The pattern on the tapestry was indistinct and was more a molding of lighter and dark shades of the green.  I saw the rod as the cross bar that two hands were holding up and I recognized them as Jesus hands and the rod/pole was MY cross.  And as I saw this I saw the dark threads being pulled out to the side of the tapestry and left behind were just the gold threads.  No distinct pattern was discernible but I knew it was pure gold.

I had been meditating on what the Lord had been showing me in the last few weeks out of the scripture.

Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.

Some weeks ago this scripture was referred to in a service I was in and it stirred me to seek the Lord as to what "my cross" was. I have heard so many messages about it being my calling, my mission, etc. and it didn't ring in my spirit as Truth.  I began to see this scripture as a three step process. 

1.    Let him deny himself.

2.    Take up his cross.

3.    Follow me. 

Now some places in scripture the #1 is left out and just the 2 and 3 are included. Some places Jesus calls to individuals with just a Follow me but in each instance it involves what is written in #1 and #2.

The denying himself is something so different from what I imagined for so many years.  I have come over the last 4-5 years to understand  how the power in my natural man or my Adamic nature from birth seeks to take care of myself, to provide for things I have need of: my emotional needs, my spiritual needs and my physical needs and every other kind of need I could have.  This refers to the power I have to manipulate and control the circumstances of my life in order to meet my needs.  It is well known that a newborn learns within the first couple of weeks that when he cries his mom holds him and feeds him. So he learns quickly that if he cries even when he isn't hungry that his mom will pick him up.  We don't have to be taught how to manipulate to get our needs met. This is the very fiber and thread of our life tapestry from the time we were born.  When Adam and woman choose to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they choose to become personally responsible for their life needs as opposed to having been totally provided for by the Spirit of God as they walked with God.  And of that nature we were born. 

Becoming Aware

So, the first step in following the Lord Jesus is to come to the awareness of our basic bent, the fabric of our nature which is to take care of ourselves.

The second step, similar to the first, is taking up our cross.  This has come to have such new meaning to me and so different from what has been in my knowledge base over the years. And I don't know who I might have first heard teach on this, so I can't give credit to anyone specifically. Whoever it was, God by Holy Spirit has stirred and quickened my understanding and I have sought further to learn of Him what it meant for me.  What I have come to understand is that "my cross" is the cross of MY humiliation.   My humiliation is in the fact that I am totally helpless to do anything but meet my own needs, and that it is the very essence of my humanity apart from the working of the Spirit of God in me. Humiliation comes from the word "human".  My humanity and the power in it to meet my own needs not only is greater than my ability to change it, it is totally destructive to me and to every other human being I contact. It leads to death!   So when I take up "my cross" it means owning my own humiliation, the total inability to change my nature.

Jesus' cross was the cross of His humiliation.  All who hang on a tree are accursed.  I am accursed as I hang on my cross...dead, deserving of nothing but death. My cross represents my total inability to change myself, to change the manipulative nature that I have come to recognize.  Then and only then is my heart such to follow after the Lord Jesus. Then is when I am open to regeneration and rebirth, the resurrection Life of Jesus. Jesus who was perfect, who never sinned, who never partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, took on himself MY HUMILIATION, my human nature that was accursed, and He became a curse for me that I might share in His eternal life and fellowship with our Father in heaven.   This is why the cross of Jesus Christ is the center point of our faith. Without the cross, there is no relief from the burden of my humanity, no freedom from the curse, no freedom from the guilt and shame and condemnation of not being perfect. The shed blood of Jesus on the cross paid the price for my humanity and paved the way for the coming of the Holy Spirit to inhabit this "house of flesh." Guilt, shame, condemnation taken care of once for all at Calvary! And once for all provided for in the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, when we received in Him, resurrection life!!

Becoming Perfected

As you read the scriptures you will see that Jesus invited a variety of individuals to follow him but they had other things they felt responsible for, bury their father, etc. One fellow came to Jesus whom he addressed as "good teacher" and was looking to be perfected as he had kept the law.  He had not yet come to the place to realize that his own efforts could never make him perfect. Under the law which is Holy and Perfect, he would always fall short.  Jesus added one more thing to the man's efforts to be perfected:  go sell all you have and come follow me.  Jesus was showing forth the truth that none of us are perfected under the law, that there will always be "one more thing" for us to do to be perfected, an impossibility considering our human nature.  This young rich ruler, as he is called, came to Jesus to learn how to be perfect. He missed Jesus, the Way the Truth the Life. He wanted something FROM Jesus.  This young rich ruler may have been the only person to leave Jesus sorrowing and disappointed.  Riches are not what keep us from the Kingdom. It is our inability to let go of the power that riches hold by which we can take care of ourselves and manipulate and control our circumstances.

When you look at the calling of the disciples, you see something different from the above people who were invited to follow Jesus.  They left everything. They left everything behind, their livelihoods by which their needs were met, representing their old nature.  And after Jesus was crucified, we well remember they went and picked up their nets again but until Jesus came to them they weren't very profitable.  Until the Resurrected Christ, the resurrection Life of Jesus Christ indwells us, we are powerless to do anything but yield to what Paul in Romans so aptly calls the sin principle within us. But Christ in us is our hope of being like Christ...hope of glory.  The only way God's nature can be in us and we can be like Him is as the very power and presence of Holy Spirit indwells us and endues us with Himself.

You can't Wrap Your Mind Around God

Many a time clients sat in front of me in my office and said, I can't wrap my mind around that (as we were talking about God.) And I used to kind of chuckle and say, there is no way your mind can wrap around God as he is just too big, too infinite, beyond comprehension. However, His mind is so big it can wrap around yours and fill it with Himself.  No man by his effort can comprehend God or provide for himself or deal with his own mindsets, his own desires. We are totally dependent on the power of God within us to even come to the awareness of Him. So it is as we come to recognize the power of our old nature and take up our cross. And we continually engage in this process throughout our time in this earthly coat.

When I saw the tapestry, I saw the dark threads being pulled out to the side. I knew it represented the recognition of our thoughts and desires being put off and recognizing the gold of His thoughts.  The dark green threads weren't kept....they appeared irrelevant once pulled out of the tapestry...only the gold of the main fabric of the tapestry shown forth.

Part of the process of denying ourselves and taking up our cross is what Paul speaks of in Romans 4-12 and he points to the process of being "renewed in the spirit of your mind."  Another place he speaks of casting down every thought and imagination that exalts itself before the throne.  These are other ways of illustrating steps 1 and 2. For when we follow Jesus, we are yielding to His mind, to His heart, to His strength.  I lay my way of thinking down, my way of feeling, my choices, my energy recognizing them to be limited, imperfect and leading to destruction. And by my will I yield to all that HE IS, the I AM working and flowing through me by Holy Spirit.

The image of Christ ultimately appears on that tapestry which is my life. It becomes a full reflection of Himself.  He is the perfect one and while I am in this house of flesh,  His nature is being perfected in me...not my nature, but His nature is being perfected, for he alone is Perfect, the perfect embodiment of Father himself!

Meri Ford

renewedhope@peoplepc.com