I have clung to the message of the Cross and why Jesus - our Savior - died, and I believe His word and His promises.  I believe in clinging to the Cross for this promise:  through every situation, the hope of resurrection is available.

I believe there are different attributes of the Cross which reflect the nature and character of Jesus.  Recently I have clung to the attribute of grace - grace like a river.  Maybe you are in need of hope; it's at the Cross.  Maybe today it's a need for faith to believe for healing or a miracle.  Another day the attribute of the Cross may be His infinite mercy to operate where we deserve death for sin.  He will extend the mercy found only at the Cross -  where our repentance is accepted because we must die to our flesh to be raised up in the life of the Spirit.

There is a cross you must bear each day - a cross that God has asked you to carry.  "And he who does not daily take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conforming wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying also] is not worthy of Me.  Whoever find his [lower] life will loose it [the higher life] and whoever looses his [lower] life on My account will find it [the higher life]." (Matt. 10:38-39)

The Amplified Bible says "cleave steadfastly to Me."  This states that you are not alone in the bearing of your cross; you are yoked with Jesus.  You and Jesus are bound together and He carries it with you.  You cannot fail if you rely on, trust, and obey Him.

Saint Francis de Sales put it like this:  "The cross God now sends you, He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His justice, warmed with loving arms, and weighed with His own hands to see that it not be one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you."

Let me put it like this:  take your cross to the Cross and be set free, for in the dying of the flesh, you rise to life in the Spirit - and this through the humility of obedience for the promise of resurrection life.  When you go to the Cross, you are not alone.  Jesus is there with you, watching you, and delighting in you because He loves you and wants you to be free to experience a life of the Life.  Jesus, the lover of your soul, will be there - cheering you on, drawing you into a life of faith, favor, and freedom!

I run to the Cross of Christ and embrace it because my Lord has shown me my condition without it.  I cannot live the life of the Spirit unless the flesh dies; I cannot live the life of power if I do not embrace the cross of intimacy with my Lord's sufferings borne for me.

How can you truly embrace something unless there is the experience of it?  Jesus bore all things so we may live.  Selflessness was, and is, His character and His nature.  The Cross was never meant to be the end of it all.  It's the beginning of the reality of living truly spiritually abundant lives.  The beauty of the Cross is that after every trial, there is peace and rest in knowing that Jesus made a way to a life of freedom and abundance.

Jesus is calling you to lay down your grief, sickness, and infirmities, lay down your sin and carnal desires, lay down your greed and avarice, lay down your pain and afflictions, lay down your addictions and your hopelessness so that He can give you life.  Not a temporal life of physical satisfaction only, but a spiritual life where all things are new and possible.  The Cross promises this:  if you lay down your life, your trial, your affliction (or whatever it needs to be) and die to the flesh, you will then live a life of hope and glory in an ever increasing measure.  But you must take your cross to the Cross daily and lay down what must be killed in you for that day so Jesus can live in and through you.  Embrace the Cross and die to live forever.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."  Jim Elliot