Walking the Way of the Cross

In our natural life our ambitions change as we grow, but in the Christian life the goal is given at the very beginning, and the beginning and the end are exactly the same, namely, our Lord himself. We start with Christ and we end with him—"till we all come … to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13), not simply to our own idea of what the Christian should be. The goal of the missionary is to do God's will, not be useful or win the lost. A missionary is useful, and he does win the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord. In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where he reached the culmination of his father’s will upon the cross, unless we go there with Jesus, we will have no friendship or fellowship with him. Nothing ever diverted our Lord on his way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where he was persecuted, or lingered in the others where he was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned our Lord even the slightest degree away from his purpose to go to "up to Jerusalem." "A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master" (Matthew 10:24). In other words, the same things that happen to our Lord will happen to us on our way to our "Jerusalem.” There will be works of God exhibited through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude while the rest will show total ingratitude, but nothing must divert us from going "up to our Jerusalem." "There they crucified him" (Luke 23:33). That is what happened when our Lord reached Jerusalem, and the event is the doorway to our salvation. The saints, however, do not end in crucifixion; by the Lord’s grace they end in glory. In the meantime, our watch word should be summed up by each of us saying, "I to go up to Jerusalem." Now we cannot discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time, we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sence it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "you must do this. I cannot.” I implore you, start asking yourself, "have I reached that moment?" Do not sit down and start watching your own mind to see if it is coming along. That puts a man quite on the wrong track. When the most important things in our lives happen, we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "Hello! I'm growing up." It is often only when he looks back that he realizes what has happened and recognizes it as what people call "growing up." You can see it even in simple matters. A man who starts anxiously watching to see whether he's going to sleep is very likely to remain wide awake. As well, the thing I am talking of now may not happen to everyone in a sudden flash—as it did to Saint Paul or Bunyan; it may be so gradual that no one could ever point to a particular hour or even a particular year. And what matters is the nature of the change in itself, not how we feel what is happening. It is a change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God. –CS Lewis

Today’s devotional reading is a little lengthy, but rich in every last syllable! Jesus calls His followers, saying, “follow me.” Our Jerusalem will likely not be a cross on Golgotha, but it is upon the Lord’s way that we must fix our steps, whatever that path offers up along the way. Those encounters along the way change us, shape us, grow us, and render us a blessing to others. Stay the course. Run the race to win!