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The Call to Take Up Your Cross
By Emily Rose Massey "Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."- Matthew 16:24 ESV The late British Evangelist Leonard Ravenhill once said regarding evangelism in America, "We take people to the cross, but we don't put them on the cross." This powerful statement can evoke a range of emotions regarding the state of Christianity in Western nations- from offense to righteous anger. For me, personally, it evokes the latter. When my husband and I met fifteen years ago, I was exposed to the worldly teachings found in the health and wealth gospel, which exalts man over God, using the cross of Christ as a means of forgiveness of sins plus worldly possessions. Sadly, because I didn't have a solid theological or biblical footing, I was tossed to and fro by these false doctrines and embraced it all as gospel truth. I want to lovingly warn that just because someone quotes from the Bible and uses the name of Jesus in their speech, it doesn't mean that we get to check our discernment at the door. In fact, those who claim to preach Christ are the ones we need to make sure what they are saying lines up with scripture contextually and historically. Brother Ravenhill's quote hits home because we see how this distorted gospel of forgiveness of sins without forsaking the world has infiltrated so much of Christianity today. When we look at the cross, do we see a life of ease and comfort ahead of us or an instrument of death (not only to Christ but to ourselves)? The gospel is good news, but first, it is a call to die so that you can truly find life eternal. We see Christ's call to die to self in the gospel of Matthew: | 
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