Cross Encounter

I have been doing a lot of reading lately trying to dive deeper into the Word and draw closer to the Lord. It’s been a journey and I definitely still have a long way to go. As I’ve been reading and studying and listening to different sermons and teachings, there’s been a common theme of repentance lately. I even noticed how much that has been reflected in my last few blog entries. God obviously wants the message to get across to the saved and unsaved that the time for playing games and living any kind of way is over.  But I wondered out loud to God recently,  “Why is it so hard for people to give up the world?” Why does it take some of us years and years and often something traumatic to come to a place where God is at the forefront of our lives and we want to live the way God has called for us to live? The answer came to me a couple of different ways this week while I was on a business trip and had the chance to spend some uninterrupted time with the Lord.  The Cross hasn’t become real to some of us yet.

I have to admit to being a bit floored! What do you mean, Lord? That’s the first thing we confess when we get saved. How many Easters have we celebrated the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross and God raised Him from the dead 3 days later. I mean, when the preacher says “Early Sunday morning, He got up with all power in His hands”, that’s when everyone starts shouting, right? So how can it be possible that anyone could miss the meaning of the cross?  You’re going to have to clear this up for me, God!

Then I got it, it’s not that people don’t honor the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again. But until you’ve have had what T. Austin Sparks calls a “Cross Encounter”, it is just words to you. Have you ever had an experience where you felt like you were out there all alone? Your family didn’t seem to quite understand. You were being talked about, you were hurt or you were just plain lost? You might have even felt like God had left you and wasn’t answering your prayers as He had in the past? But then the sun started shining again. You could get through a whole day without crying. God brought you back from a dark place and gave you a peace and joy that you didn’t understand. Then all of a sudden when you read Isaiah 53, it hits you at your very core because you realize that Jesus Christ died on the cross for YOU! That He laid down His life KNOWINGLY for your lying, hateful, gossiping, fast self!  Or that He took the punishment so that you could have peace!  That’s a cross encounter! When you’ve experienced something that shook everything that you thought was you and you got back up. That’s a cross encounter!

It can’t just be words that we read out of habit. It has to be real! It’s when we really come to see that we are only here because of God’s grace and sacrifice. Sometimes all it takes is really thinking about what we were and I mean really examining ourselves and realizing that Jesus took on ALL of our sins so that we could be new creatures!

I challenge you today to have a personal encounter with the Cross. Take some quiet time and just remember what Jesus Christ has done for you. He did it just for you because He loves you. How much of ourselves can we give back to Him? Isn’t the Cross enough to strive to be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God? I’m a witness that once I had an encounter with the Cross, I couldn’t live the same old way anymore. I wanted more and more of God and that desire overwhelmed the need for the things of the world. It’s not always easy, nor do I always get things right but it's worth it because of what He did for me.

I want to leave you this week with Isaiah 53 in The Message Bible translation. I pray that it blesses you as it blessed me! To God be the glory for the great things He has done!

 ¹ Who believes what we've heard and seen? Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

^2-6The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost.
We've all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong,
on him, on him.

^7-9He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn't say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he'd never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn't true.

¹⁰Still, it's what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he'd see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God's plan will deeply prosper through him.

^11-12Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,
will make many "righteous ones,"
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly—
the best of everything, the highest honors—
Because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many,
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

AMEN!