This Is the Cross I Have Chosen for You

So many people wonder about why bad things happen to good people. Why would God allow these things to happen? Surely, He couldn’t be desiring them for us, or definitely not arranging them for us. Maybe God isn’t in control. I know God is good. So, maybe He just lets it happen because of this fallen world.

There is something quite wrong with this perspective, yet many of us believe it, or have believed it in the past. We seem to think that God doesn’t know what’s best for us. Either that, or that He can’t control what’s best for us. Maybe we as humans keep wrecking His plans, because we have free will and therefore have the power to do that. We forget that the King is far wiser than we are, and can do anything that follows with His entirely good nature.

We fail to realize that God is involved in the daily lives of every person on the Earth. And every animal. We fail to remember that He knows when every sparrow falls and that everything is working together for His purpose.

The truth is this: God not only allows trials, but actually specifically arranges them for you. “But why?” you say, “Isn’t He good and loving?” But God says, “Yes, child. I am. And I know what’s best for you, and this is it.”

In trial and pain, God is working your salvation. We are obsessed with ourselves. We are full of self-love, everyone of us. “None is righteous, no; not one.” All of us treat ourselves as our own God, and like the pharisees, we all do ‘good’ in order that others may think highly of us. Yet it’s all a mask, for we are living for our own gain. One who lives as their own god is perpetually against God. God has paid for our sin on the cross of Christ, yet our redemption is not complete.

He knows us. He knows our thoughts and intentions. He understands where we place the most value. He sees the places where we are most sensitive. And He desires to make us pure. So He puts the cross in our lives. Every day. So that He can put to death the self-love within us.

God never promised a life of ease after accepting His free gift of salvation and freedom from sin. No, He said whoever would come after Him must take up his cross daily and follow Him. That to save his life, he must lose it. That he must give up everything in order to follow Him. Death isn’t comfortable. It isn’t pretty. The cross wasn’t designed for comfort, it was designed for death. And death to self is necessary. Our self-love must be crucified with Christ.

Those crosses in your life, those hardships, losing a loved one, a job, a friend, dealing with those people that always seem to rub you the wrong way, none of it is for no reason. Each one is specifically aimed at a part of your self-love. An arrow headed for your heart. You don’t even have a choice about it. God is going to bring the cross to you whether you like it or not. The question is whether you’ll accept it, and thereby let God do His work with it in you, or whether you will harden your heart and hang on to your self.

God was sharing this with me, and showing me how specifically pointed His trials were. How wisely He aimed them. How He desired that I should die, so that He may live within me. And He said to me the next time a cross came into my life: “This is the cross I have chosen for you. Will you not accept it?”

Will you accept the careful hand of God in your life, and offer up to Him yourself as a living sacrifice? Or will you reject your death and His life? Believe in this: God has only ever had your best interest in mind. And He is in perfect control.