"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.'"I realized lately just HOW MUCH we get lazy!!! Jesus was consistently in God's presence.... He was always thinking about him, praising him, praying to him, obey him.... Why don't we do those things??? We always let little things and little excuses get in the way of even just saying a little thank you prayer to God. Just to keep him in our minds... You know?
God is ALWAYS thinking about us. There's a song that says that he put the stars in the sky and knows each of them by name (that is not the exact words.. but) that made me think of how many people there are and how we are just like those stars. He puts each one of us on the earth and knows us by our name. And think about how personal knowing someone by name is really..... You don't give just anybody your name. And each person's name really fits WHO they are..... (Also in the bible though it says that once we give up our old life he will give us a new name.... But that's a different topic)
Anyway, where I am going with this, is just God sent his only son to give his life for us. And do we deserve it??? Think about it, do we REALLY deserve that?? God believes we do!!!! But each and every day we decide to get lazy and do other things and save reading our bibles and praying to God for the next day. (God still loves us all the same, but...) let's try and give up something for just a day and see how different it is, give that up and read your bible instead!!!! :-) Let's take up our own cross, sacrifice ourselves for God and for other people on this earth. It wasn't easy for Jesus, it won't be easy for us!!!
I just reread those couple of verses (Matthew 16:24-25) and THINK about how powerful those verses are!!!! Dying to ourselves, which means giving COMPLETE control to God. None of the control is ours..... That is really hard to do. Us as humans like to have control over everything... So we need to give up knowing what is going to happen next and trying to control that to God. It says "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it." Just think about what is holding you back from giving EVERYTHING up to God!! Because that is most likely what is holding you back from taking up your cross everyday; what makes you so lazy???
I hope this all makes sense, it was pretty much just a bunch of scrambly babbleness :o) .... But seriously. Let's not be lazy any more. Jesus was never a lazy person. He never thought of himself, besides thinking about the relationship he had with God. He put that at Number One. So let's follow in Jesus' footsteps!! He's holding your hand throughout this life- so just remember, you're not alone :-)
