The same power

We love powerful Jesus.

We run from suffering Jesus.

We don’t understand that the same power that raised Him also kept Him on the cross.

Love.

Lent needs to be long so we can be forced to sit in Gathsemane and Calvary because it’s not our naturally desired place. With all talks about self help, getting healed, becoming better, we want to move too quickly from the place which forms the cross. We don’t understand the cross, we don’t get it’s necessity.

We like to disciple people into victory, triumph, overcoming, deliverance.

We don’t like to disciple people into the cross. We don’t like to stand there with them. We figured many psychological ideas about how to get rid of it and we preach it with pride.

Only few can show how to carry the cross gently, with gratitude. Only God knows what it takes.

We don’t want to deny ourselves. We want to promote ourselves.

We don’t want to pick up our cross. We want to leave it behind and move on.

We don’t want to follow Jesus. We want to follow pleasure.

Jesus kept the signs of the cross forever to show us that His suffering matters to us, our suffering matters to Him.

A distaste for the cross is a distaste for Jesus.