Pick Up Your Cross and Don’t Come Back!

You knew that if you saw a man carry a cross out of the city, he wasn’t coming back.
Jesus likens the lost that are reaped for the kingdom as wheat. Interesting truth here. How does one harvest wheat? In the days of Jesus, they used scythes. The scythe was used to sever the wheat stalk from the earth, leaving the roots behind. This can be and should be applied to when one comes to Jesus and is made a new creature in Christ. If Jesus used this illustration to demonstrate the lost being harvested, then when one does come to Jesus, he is to be severed from the world and he is to leave his roots in the ground.
How many new Christians do this? How many leave their old lives behind and start over? Today, most would scoff at this notion and declare these words as idiocy. However, if Jesus said it was so, then it is so. Jesus didn’t throw around words and illustrations haphazardly, when He said something, it was for a purpose. He meant to say that yes, as one looks out at the fields in harvest time, the fields are indeed white, and what a beautiful sight that does paint to the onlooker. But the comparison to how wheat is harvested cannot be ignored or we lose a grand truth that can surely help those who have troubles with their new salvation and integrating it into their work and lifestyle. The reason why new Christians who are sincerely saved have such a hard time with their old lives and ways is because they are different, they are new creatures in Christ and there has indeed been a change. The old ways should seem as foreign to the new Christian, as a visitor from another country would feel visiting for the first time. There should be an uncomfortability and an awkwardness.   This indicates change and repentance. If this change isn’t there and the “new Christian” goes right on living the way he did before, then I say to you that the steps to Jesus were not Holy Spirit inspired nor were they sincere.
The above quote mentioned has an amazing truth that the Holy Spirit allowed me to grasp the other day as I was praying. Jesus told us that when we become His followers, we are to take up our cross and follow Him. We are told that we are to leave all and serve Him alone. There can be no looking back or you will suffer the same fate as Lot’s wife, but in a spiritual context. When a man in this regard, picked up his cross and walked through the city gates and left town, he wasn’t coming back, he was going to his death. This is so true to the new Christian.  He should indeed go to his death and come out of the grave as a new man, a new creature in Jesus. He didn’t go back to his old life and ways (the city), there was no turning around and no looking back. As Jesus set His face as flint, so should we as we start our walk with Him.  Nothing should turn our heads, no one should deter us from our mission. The roots stay in the ground, you give everything up and you do not look back for anything.