The Power of the Cross by Casting CrownsSample

God doesn’t just save us from something (sin), but he also saves us to something (life in Christ). We aren’t just saved in power from our past. We’re living in power, walking in power, right now, and that should change the way we see people, opportunities, and trials. It should change how we see everything.

Two great heartbreaks will change the soul. The first heartbreak comes when we see the sin in our own lives. God opens our eyes to our separation from Him and the harsh truth that we’re living in pits we dug for ourselves. We dug those pits thinking that we’d find treasure. We dug deep into the pleasures of the world, but the treasures never were there in the first place. All we found was a hole, a pit we couldn’t escape on our own.

The second heartbreak believers experience is over the sin in the world. I can’t just sit here basking in the light; I have to run to the darkness and start a fight. I want to reminisce and remember what the Cross has done, but I also want to challenge believers to lean in to what the Cross is doing.

The finished work of Jesus is a truth we struggle with because sometimes we still feel we’re trying out for the team or maybe we’re in a probation period. To trust in what Jesus has done for me is to trust in a work that is finished. The finished work is that I’m justified. That means it’s just as if I’ve never sinned because of Christ.

Following our Heavenly Father isn’t doing more for Him and knowing more about Him intellectually. Following our Heavenly Father means we trust what Jesus did to make us right with the Father and surrender to him as our Lord.

It’s not an easy path. In fact, Jesus called it the narrow way. As soon you start walking with Jesus and inevitably do an “old life” thing, you start doubting yourself. Too often we fail to tell new believers that they have all the training necessary for their old lives but don’t have any training yet in their new lives. It can be tough to start living for Jesus when you don’t know his Word. It’s easy to listen to the wrong voices and feel like you’re failing—or feel like you were never really changed at all. That’s what the accuser does. He constantly tells you that you’re not who God says you are.

The training manual is God’s Word. He has given it to glorify himself by reminding us not only who he is but also who we now are in him.