Then He said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
Luke 9 : 23
It's a heavy devotion, to follow Christ. In denying ourselves every day, we don't only deny ourselves of the worldly desires, like greed and lust. Our call to denial applies to even the more sentimental and seemingly less detrimental parts of our lives; including our friends.
Since coming to Christ, the change that has taken place has drawn me higher, closer to God, and inevitably farther from the friends with which I used to have so many entertaining conversations. It almost seems far away, the time when I hardly cared about the things that came from my lips, when the eternal consequences of my actions was simply an abstract concept, distant and unimportant. I suppose while chronologically, it was only two months the importance and longevity of that change endows upon it a more poignant meaning. I can't talk of the same television shows anymore; I don't watch them. I can't play mindlessly violent video games with my friends anymore; I have eternal matters with which I've decided to concern myself. The whole idea of being a new creation might have been a little easier, had I not inherited the same concern and affections for my friends. In following Christ, the closer I come to Him, the farther I tread from those I still care very much for. An inner yearning that cries for their salvation is stifled by an outer fear of rejection and ridicule for believing in something that my finite and fallible senses can not perceive. And even if I did manage to reach out to them with that concern, how do I tell them of the urgency of repentance? After all, even "Christians" today would rather pass notes in church than listen to a sermon that doesn't promise boundless prosperity, unconditional love, and eternal life in spite of the fact that they show no conviction of the dedication to follow Christ to begin with. It's discouraging to think of the massive oppression that I feel when trying to summon the courage to witness to someone when that someone has been hardened by a world steeped in sex, violence, and rebellion; when that someone is surrounded by "Christians" that claim they have follow Jesus when they are in the very same moment staggering down the other direction; when that someone is bound in seemingly invincible chains that over and over force them back into slavery of an addiction to greed, to lust, to affection from all of the wrong sources, every one of which turns us farther from a Father that is crying to save us from the things that will only bring us destruction in the end.
In facing to such an immense adversity, I realize now that my only hope resides in my God, who in His grace saved even me, from my own self-dug grave. If He can so lovingly reach into a place I never thought I'd ever escape from and lift me up to a height I never imagined I could attain, then who am I to say that He can not do the same for anyone else to whom I share this testimony? Sometimes in feeling despair in my ability to witness, I lose sight of who God really is, and what He has irrefutably done in my own life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters in Christ. No one can deny this work which I know He has done in my life, and I will stand to testify. I pray to a God who saves that He will give me the strength to stand and proclaim this truth in my heart, even if it means I must stand amongst an unbelieving and oppressive generation that looks down on me for my faith in the truth; not my truth... the truth.
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