The Mirror of the Word and other works by C.E. White can be purchased on her website, cewhitebooks.com or on Amazon

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’”

—Matthew 16:24

Do we really want to come after Christ and follow him for his own sake regardless of what it means for our earthly lives? Or do we only like the idea of coming after him for his benefits?

Following him means denying ourselves and taking up a cross. 

Many of us believe we can carry that cross without ever denying ourselves, but we will never be able to bear it if we’re still setting our minds on the flesh, not the Spirit (Romans 8:6–9, Galatians 5:16–17). 

We will pick it up and find it too heavy. We cannot carry its weight along with our desires and this world; we must let go of one or the other, and we too often lay the cross back down (Matthew 6:24), go back to following ourselves or the world, and end up with nothing. Losing our lives is the way to finding them (Matthew 10:39).

As Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, we must be willing to offer all our earthly hopes to God. This doesn’t mean we will never have any of them, but we must never rely on them, grip them tightly, or prioritize them above going after Christ himself.

If we hope to bear the weight of the cross, we must be willing to say no to ourselves in order to say yes to the Lord, and we will never do so if we don’t truly love him and want to follow him (John 14:21).

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