Jesus looks past the noise of the day and speaks to the deepest part of us: if we want to follow Him, it will be daily, intentional, and costly. Not because He enjoys making life hard, but because real life is found on the far side of surrender—where self is no longer on the throne.

Bold Invitation, Not Gentle Suggestion

Jesus doesn’t present discipleship as an accessory you add to your existing plans. He speaks like a King calling you into a new way of living—one where your choices, priorities, and identity bend around Him. The call is personal (“If anyone would come after Me…”) and it’s honest: following Him means saying no to the old rule of self. Paul echoes the same reality: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

And yet, it’s an invitation, not a threat. He’s not trying to shrink your life; He’s trying to save it from being wasted. We tend to treat freedom as the right to do whatever we want, but Scripture defines freedom as the power to do what is right. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1)—freedom from sin’s grip, from people-pleasing, from the exhausting need to control outcomes.

A Cross You Carry, Not a Cross You Admire

A cross isn’t decoration; it’s an instrument of death. So when Jesus calls you to take up your cross daily, He’s calling you to a repeated, practical dying—dying to pride, to revenge, to lust, to the need to be seen, to the demand that life go your way. “Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1). Living sacrifices don’t die once—they climb back on the altar every morning.

This is where it gets real: the “daily” part means today counts. Not when you feel ready. Not when things calm down. Today, you can choose forgiveness over keeping score, integrity over shortcuts, purity over compromise, generosity over self-protection. And God doesn’t leave you to muscle it out alone—“for it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose” (Philippians 2:13).

Following Jesus in Real Life

Following isn’t only about what you refuse; it’s about who you pursue. Jesus doesn’t call you to deny yourself and then wander in emptiness—He calls you to Himself. He leads, speaks, corrects, strengthens, and comforts. “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). The goal isn’t a tougher you; it’s a closer walk with Him.

And here’s the surprising promise: the road that looks like loss becomes the path to joy. Jesus says, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it” (Luke 9:24). The world says, “Protect yourself at all costs.” Jesus says, “Give yourself away in obedience, and you will find what your soul has been reaching for all along.” Even your suffering becomes meaningful in His hands—“If we endure, we will also reign with Him” (2 Timothy 2:12).

Lord Jesus, thank You for calling me to follow You and for giving me true life. Help me deny myself today, take up my cross, and obey You with joy—make my life a clear “yes” to You. Amen.

It is more than a little strange that persons who modestly decline to risk an opinion on matters that do not touch them at all closely, such as philosophy or science for instance, are often ready and eager to pronounce with finality on religion which above all else is vital to their welfare for this world and that which is to come. This follows the popular notion that everyone is capable of discovering for himself the true way to heaven and that one man's belief is as good as another's in any kind of weather. A second tenet in this creed is that no one has the right to question the belief of anyone else or to try to influence him in any way in religious matters. This leads naturally to the third tenet which is that we should practice complete tolerance toward every expression of religious belief, however base or ill-foundedit may be, and accept it as someone's way of worshiping God even if it isn't ours.

All this has about it a certain savor of charity and slips well off the lips of politicians, who are forced to try to please everyone, and liberal ministers who find it profitable to do so. But the man who has knelt before the burning bush or heard the sound of thunder on the mount can never bring himself to sell out his soul in that manner. The man who has walked beside the sea and has heard the voice of Jesus saying "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6), can ever get the consent of his heart thus to trifle with religion. He has been smitten with the love of God and the wonder of the cross and he can never again be tolerant in things that touch his soul and the souls of his fellow men. He will live beside, be patient with, minister to, pray for and love any religionist of whatever color or creed from a cardinal to a medicine man from the long grass, but never will he compromise the truth to stay on good terms with anyone. He may die for men, but he will never trifle with them.

So have I looked upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory. - Psalm 63:2

WHEN was it that David thus longed for God? In the midst of his sorrow. Even then the thing that he wanted most was not restoration to Jerusalem, or the defeat of his enemies, but union with God. Oh! that is a test of faith, one which very little of our faith could stand, that even when we are ringed about by calamities that seem to crush us, what we long for most is not the removal of the sorrow, but the presence of our Father. Good men are driven to God by the stress of tempests, and ordinary and bad men are generally driven away from Him. What does your sorrow do for you, friend? Does it make you writhe in impatience? does it make you murmur sullenly against His imposition of it? or does it make you feel that now in the stress and agony there is nothing that you can grasp and hold to but Him, and Him alone? And so in the hour of darkness and need is my prayer, in its deepest meaning, not, "Take away Thy heavy hand from me," but, "Give me more of Thyself, that Thy hand may thereby be lightened? "

I notice that this longing, though it be struck out by sorrow, is not forced upon him for the first time by sorrow. The second verse of the psalm might be more accurately rendered: "So have I gazed upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory." That is to say, as in the sorrows and in the wilderness he is conscious of this desire after God, so amidst the sanctities of the Tabernacle and the joyful services and sacrifices of its ritual worship, does he remember that he looked through the forms to Him that shone in them, and in them beheld His power and His glory. So the longing that springs in his heart is an old longing. He remembers that his days of sorrow are not the first days in which He has been driven to say, "Come Thou and help me." He can remember glad, peaceful moments of communion, and these are homogeneous and of a piece with his religious contemplations in his hours of sorrow.

Ah! that life is but a poor, fragmentary one which seeks God by fits and starts; and that seeking after God is but a half-hearted and partial one which is only experienced in the moments of pain and grief. It is well to cry for Him in the wilderness, but it is not well that it should only be in the wilderness in which we cry for Him. It is well when darkness and disaster teach us our need of Him; but is not well when we require the darkness and the disaster to teach us our need.

And, on the other hand, that is but a poor, fragmentary life, and that religion is but a very incomplete and insincere one, which is more productive of raptures in the sanctuary than of seeking after God in the wilderness. There are plenty of Christian people who have a great deal more consciousness of God’s presence in the idle emotions of a church or a chapel than in the strenuous efforts of daily life. Both things separately are maimed and miserable; and both must be put together - the communion in the sanctuary and the communion in the wilderness, seeking after Him in the sanctities of worship, and seeking after Him in the prose of daily life - if ever the worship of the sanctuary or the prose of daily life are to be brightened with His presence.