You'll find every one of us who walks with God, there'll be times when we face painful situations, and everything in you wants to back up and then it's a matter of well who's will, who's kingdom with prevail? Will I save myself, or will I trust God and yield to Him, and go through a painful experience, trusting on the other side of it is His resurrection life, because crosses, it never ends at the cross. The other side is resurrection. We want the resurrection without the cross - but there isn't any way to get that, so we have found, and I've noticed in like say for example, a principle in the world; in the world it will tell you, you can have it now, pay for it later. In God it never works that way. In God it's exactly the opposite; you pay now, and the blessings come later. It's just so totally different, so in God's kingdom it works completely different to the world or secular or self-centred kingdom. We have to understand that.
So - you're all getting really quiet - so the cross then, is a key to walking in the kingdom of God. We can't escape the cross. Jesus said in Matthew 16, He said if anyone's going to follow Me, he will have to deal with the issue of self, take up his personal cross, face the challenges that will come into his life through following Me, and then follow Me. So how about this? We want a Christianity which is blessed, and good, and everything's great, but we keep the cross out of it? But there's no way you could keep the cross out of it. The cross is central to the life of discipleship. What does that mean? We don't have to go and hang on the cross like Jesus, He's done all of that for us. What we have to do is face that the cross is where my will, and my ambition, and my desires, come into conflict with what God is revealing He wants me to do, and I surrender and yield and do what He wants me to do.
Anyone who's been a Christian for some years would understand, this is a part of walking with God. If any man, any man wants to follow Me, he must deny self, take up the cross, and come follow Me. That doesn't mean you let go all your desires, and your dreams, and all the things you've got in your heart, and now there's nothing left. No, it's not that at all. What He's saying is, there'll come a point where your ambitions will conflict with God's plan, and you need to learn to yield. Getting the idea? So here's the thing. If I just get you all revved up about desires and dreams and destiny, get you all excited, and now you'll be getting up all kinds of ideas, and coming up with all sorts of things, and away you go and you're on your track now. See the problem with that is, it's all driven by ego and self, so just because you've got a lot of desires, and got a lot of dreams, doesn't mean that God really wants you to go down that route. There might be a cost, a disastrous cost to fulfilling it. What we have to do is apply wisdom and revelation to it, and that may mean I have to yield up some things I like, in order to live the life God called me to live. It's not either/or, it's just that there is an embracing of the principle of the cross. The cross is central to the kingdom of God.
Listen, God so loved the world He gave - notice the cross is the whole core of the kingdom of God. The Father loved, and He released His Son, sacrificed His Son. The Son loved the Father, He sacrificed His life. The Holy Spirit yielded His life to make this all happen. This is the core of the godhead is sacrificial, self-sacrifice and giving and generously serving. That's the core of it. Think about it. Jesus is having His last meeting with His disciples, and He bows down and He washes their feet, and of course everyone's saying well You're the Lord, You're the big shot. You shouldn't be doing the foot washing stuff. He says no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand the kingdom. In the kingdom, if you want to be great, you have to serve. If you won't let Me engage you like this, then you haven't got what it takes to advance the kingdom. Foot washing is part of the nature of God. Jesus said, I do what the Father says, so when Jesus washed feet, it was the Father washing feet. Imagine God washing your feet. It's hard to understand. How can someone so big and powerful descend to such things? Because it's the nature of the kingdom, it's not about me, it's about love being manifest.