March 1st, 21- Day 59, Year 7

I don't know about you. But as we were reading through numbers today, I found myself exhausted with the unceasing list of sacrifices that are needed to be made. One day after another, one festival after another, various kinds of sacrifices for various kinds of occasions. It's exhausting to read through all these requirements, and think of meeting them all.

In order for us to find some kind of right standing before God, and be in proper relationship with him. It's exhausting. And I have a feeling that that is the way we are intended to feel when we read it.

The blood of bulls and lambs are not what make us right with God. God doesn't need blood. God is not blood thirsty. Hebrews 10 four says For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

We are in need of something far greater than meeting the requirements of unceasing sacrifices.

The point of this exhausting list that we went through is to tell us that we can't do it

 is to show us the sheer impossibility of being justified by God by means of sacrificing one animal after another. No, we need a far greater sacrifice. And God isn't sacrificing himself because he had to do it. No, He does it because he chooses to do it. In giving his life on the cross, he chooses to show us the nature and character of his father of the love, they share together in the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

He's showing us that God is love.

what love looks like, God lays down his own life for us in selfless love, self giving love given freely on behalf of others, even for those who don't deserve it. And that would be all of us.

In Mark eight, Jesus tells his disciples, he's gonna do this. It's gonna lay down his life. And on the third day, he'll be raised from the dead. And Peter rebukes him for saying this because Peter has no concept of what Jesus is talking about.

But Jesus says that we need to turn away from our selfish ways. I want to show you the way of love, Peter.

Love is a gift. It is selfless, other centered, and you have been immersed in this love. Allow yourself to be truly convinced of it. See it meeting you right where you are right now, at all times. Even when you are being your most unlovely. When you are feeling the furthest and the farthest and the most estranged from God and yourself.

That's where he'll meet you.

That's where that cruciform love shows up.

That's where he chooses you.

So let it grab you there.

Let it permeate you there.

And then let it pour out of you.

into this world,

into others. 

That's what Jesus is calling us to when he says pick up your cross and follow me.

Pick up that message. Pick up that store, pick up the reality of God's love for you, and let it shape you in your day to day life as you walk with Him. And let this cruciform love begin to pour forth from you into the world into your relationships.

We often think it's picking up a burden when we refer to picking up your cross pick up your cross or pick up your impossible life and try your darndest to do good or do better. That's the cross to bear.

The test out what Jesus means.

The cross is not a symbol of defeat.

But it is where God defeats death.

It's a symbol of victory. It's the portal to real and eternal life.

In God's love for you in the whole world.

So pick that up and follow him pick up your cross pick up the gospel, the message the cruciform love that comes into the world and changes everything and follow Him. That's a prayer that I have for my own soul.

That's the prayer that I have for my family for my wife and my daughters and my son.

 And that's a prayer that I have for you

You are loved!