Salvation Wednesday 5/11/16 Pick Up Your Cross

Dear Father in Heaven: I love You and I seek Your forgiveness of my sins. Today I want to repent of my sins and pick up my cross and carry it. I want to learn more, even at my age, about carrying my own cross for You. Please help me with that lesson and please give me the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of this subject to be able to write about it. Then please after that help me to get it dispatched. Dear Lord, please be with Mary Hevel and her family as "Pete" has been called home. In Jesus' Name, I pray and give all praise, honor and glory this day. Also, Lord, on this day which we respectfully call Salvation Wednesday, help us to lead others to Your Cross, the Cross on Calvary to be saved by Jesus. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters: A dear friend, former bus driver and also secretary in transportation left go of her husband "Pete" as he has had his homecoming to be with Jesus. Pete was a professional baseball player in his youth playing for the original Harrisburg Senators. I called him "Knuckleball Pete." Pete also pitched for the Harrisburg Firemen in the old city leagues. At that time I was their "batboy." Memories.

As we get older we do look back a lot, but I am also looking ahead and really wanting to know more and more about Jesus whom I love more and more. There are some subjects in the Bible I want to really learn more about. Today I want to talk a little more about picking up our own cross as we repent and move nearer to seeing Jesus face to face. Also remember it is Salvation Wednesday on this line and the day we work even harder to lead others to Jesus. So come on, pick up your cross and let's follow Jesus some more. Let us grow nearer and nearer to Him.

Salvation Wednesday: May 11, 2016: Pick Up Your Cross

Luke 9:23 - 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. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." (NIV)

Brothers and sisters, think about when Jesus was carrying His Cross up Calvary's hill, how heavy it must have been. Attached to that cross made of heavy wood were the sins of the world. And just knowing how heavy just my cross is on certain days I can't even think of how heavy that one was that Jesus was fetching up that hill.

To "Pick Up Your Cross" or for me to pick up my cross to follow Jesus I must do it daily. Not a hit and miss type of thing. What does it meant o pick up our cross and do it daily? It means we must deny ourselves of all things that are not good in the eyes of the Lord. It means we must repent and we must do it daily. Some days that cross might even be heavier than other days. To pick up our cross daily means we must have FULL AND COMPLETE DEDICATION TO AND FOR OUR LORD JESUS!!! Someone should be shouting Amen on this. On some days it seems harder to pick up the cross because Satan and his evil forces are coming after us stronger than normal.

To pick up our cross to follow Jesus means to lay down the sinful life we lead. And sometimes it is hard to not sin. What are you talking about, Pastor Dan? Well, Satan keeps tossing those temptations out in front of us. Think about it, folks. Think about some of the things that cause you to cross the line into sins. Each of us have different things that Satan might come after us with. For some it might be booze or smoking or drugs. Others it might be overeating, I mean really overeating. Are you telling us that overeating an be a sin? Yes, if it is harming your health. And men, you really need to be repenting when you head to the food store on a hot day. Low cuts and short skirts can even cause an old man to think younger thoughts.

How do we pick up our cross each day? First thing in the morning we need to go to our Lord Jesus in prayer and tell Him how we are gong to be needing Him to help us to carry this cross of ours. I am going to tell you right now, there is NO WAY you can carry this cross of ours without having the help of Jesus. So when we wake in the morning we need to give thanks for a good night's rest and then ask Jesus to help us carry our cross for Jesus.

It is hard to look at it like this but we must give up our first life before we can be born into our second life. We must let our old self  and that self full of sin die off and then we get Jesus on board with us and we become "born again." Tomorrow and maybe the rest of this week, I want to take a look back at this, the front-runner for our Lord Jesus. His name of course was John, or as he became known to us as John The Baptist. He went ahead of Jesus telling people it was time to repent for the Kingdom of God was near. Now it is time for all of us to be telling others. "Repent" for the return of Jesus is near. Amen.

Dear Father in Heaven: Help us to get the message out. Help us to work for You, but only after clearing ourselves from sins and Jesus only You can clear us. Please do that for us. Help us as we walk each step for You each day. In Jesus' Name, I ask that You help us to carry our cross as Jesus carried our sins to His Cross and to His death for us. In Jesus' Name, I pray. Amen.

Now go forth for Jesus and repent of your sins and pick up your cross and move onward. Love ya.

Pastor Dan

Oh How I Love Jesus (Frederick Whitfield)

Oh how I love Jesus! O how I love Jesus!
Oh how I love Jesus, Because He first loved me.

Oh how I love Jesus! O how I love Jesus!
Oh how I love Jesus, Because He first loved me.