Sometimes you have a period of time, a block, a season, a whatever you want to call it, where you quickly notice a common topic that keeps popping up. Lately, for me, this topic has been suffering. I've been experiencing it in a sort of cycle that goes something like this: I feel fine, I learn about suffering, I suffer, I feel fine, I learn more, I suffer more, I get back on top of it, etc. Certainly this sounds like an undesirable process, and I'll be the first to tell you that when I'm in the middle of it, I do not desire it... but there's something more to it than pointless pain. Something so much more.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."

What does it mean to take up your cross? Not too long ago, I heard some man preaching about becoming a 'manly man' and how when Jesus said to take up your cross, he was saying that you should fight. . . . . . . and at this point I would like to disagree with that notion completely.

Jesus was (is) so intense. He calls people to a deep level of commitment that is far beyond what most of us will take up.

I will explain what this verse means to me by telling you what I want for my life:

I want to seek God himself at any cost, by any road. I want to be so committed to God's will that I am eager and willing to destroy any chance of acquiring my own worldly desires. I want to be not only accepting of pain that is inflicted on me, but be able to be joyful about it just knowing that God can use it for something incredible. I want to be willing to give up, sacrifice, and deny all of the things that I designed for my life in order to follow Christ.

I know that a lot of people probably get knots in their stomach reading things like that and think that it

is out of line with what God wants for a person's life. But one simply has to open the bible to read countless

examples to the contrary. I think that, with the help of the enemy, man has devoted so much time to making

life easy that he has made life virtually impossible. We've been directed to avoid or ignore pain to the extent

that we never learn to reap its benefits. The truth of the matter is that pain and sacrifice churn up the rich soil

within us and allow us to experience such greater fruits than ever before. You can live the shallow life that

produces grass, or the deep, rich life that produces full trees of fruit.