The Cross We Share

Isn’t the cross we share with Christ a cross we can’t wait to share with the world? I have been thinking about that question lately, and the more I sit with it, the more I realize that the cross is not simply something we look at and remember. It is something that changes us. We know the story of the cross. We know that Jesus willingly gave His life for us, taking upon Himself the weight of our sin so that we could be reconciled to God. We celebrate the empty tomb and the victory of His resurrection, but sometimes I wonder if we become so familiar with the cross that we forget what it means to follow the One who carried it. We love the grace found at the cross, but are we willing to embrace the surrender it calls us into? Jesus never asked us to simply admire His sacrifice. He invited us to follow Him.

In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” There is something significant about that word daily. Following Jesus is not simply a decision we make once and then move on from. It is a daily surrender of our will to His. It is choosing Him when our plans are different from His. It is trusting Him when we do not understand what He is doing. It is letting go of the desire to control everything and believing that His ways are better than ours. The world constantly tells us to put ourselves first, protect our own interests, and build our lives around what makes us happy. Jesus calls us in another direction. He calls us to deny ourselves, not because He wants less for us, but because He knows that the life we try to build around ourselves will never compare with the life He can build when we place everything in His hands.

The cross has a way of revealing the parts of our hearts we would rather keep hidden. We want the peace of Jesus, but sometimes we do not want to surrender the things that keep us anxious. We want His forgiveness, but we can struggle to forgive the people who have hurt us. We want His blessings, but we do not always want the obedience that comes before them. We want the resurrection, but we often want to avoid the dying to ourselves that makes room for new life. Yet the cross and the resurrection cannot be separated. Before there was an empty tomb, there was a cross. Before there was victory, there was surrender. Jesus knew exactly what obedience would cost Him, and He still chose it. He did not walk toward the cross because it was easy. He walked toward it because He loved us.

Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” The longer I think about those words, the more I realize how deeply they challenge the way we naturally want to live. “I no longer live” means that my life is no longer centered entirely around me. My pride does not have to win every argument. My desire to be understood does not have to control every relationship. My plans do not have to become God's plans simply because I want them badly enough. My comfort does not have to be more important than obedience. Following Jesus means allowing Him to change not only what we believe, but who we are becoming. The cross slowly teaches us that surrender is not losing ourselves. It is discovering who we were created to be when our lives are centered on Christ.

Sometimes carrying our cross looks much more ordinary than we imagine. It may look like forgiving someone who never apologized. It may mean choosing patience when anger feels justified. It may mean loving someone who is difficult to love, serving someone who cannot repay us, or remaining faithful when nobody notices. It may mean surrendering a dream we have held onto for years because we trust that God's plans are greater than our own. It may mean walking away from something that feels right to us because we know it is not right for Him. The cross is not always something other people see. Some of the deepest surrender happens quietly, in the moments when nobody is watching and the only audience is God. Yet those quiet choices matter because they are shaping our hearts into hearts that look more like His.

The longer we walk with Jesus, the more His heart begins to shape our own. We become slower to judge because we remember how much mercy we have received. We become more willing to forgive because we recognize that our own forgiveness was never something we earned. We become more patient because we remember God's patience with us. We become more willing to serve because Jesus Himself came not to be served, but to serve.

Maybe the question is not whether we are willing to carry the cross, but whether we are willing to let the world see what the cross has done in us. If Jesus has truly changed our hearts, then His love should become something that cannot stay hidden. It should reach the people we meet, the places we go, and even the difficult moments we walk through. We carry His cross not because we want the world to notice us, but because we want the world to notice Him. And maybe, in the end, that is what it means to truly follow Jesus, to carry what He asks us to carry, love as He has loved us, and live in such a way that when people look at our lives, they see a little more of Him.