Joyful Living Challenge – Day Four
April 7, 2024
Hope in the Cross
“If any man would come after me,
Luke 9:23
let him deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
Welcome to The Joyful Living Challenge!
We are called to take up our cross daily—day after day. It’s one thing to gear up for one tough challenge and to give it all you’ve got. But the self-sacrifice that Jesus asks of us is the kind that feels especially hard because there is no guarantee that the end is in sight.
But Jesus’ next words in the Gospel of Luke are critical motivators:
“Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it” (Luke 9:24).
Let’s never forget the second part of that verse.
The end of the story is not misery.
The end of the story is life—a life well lived, a life with meaning, a life with depth.
A life with empathy because you know; you understand.
A life in which you have loved Jesus for who He is, not what He gives you.
A life in which the message of Calvary has become your story: After death comes the promised resurrection.1
Today’s Challenge:
Identify a specific aspect of your life
where self-sacrifice is challenging,
and create a plan to intentionally embrace it for the next week.
1 Lisa Brenninkmeyer, Be Still: A Daily Devotional to Quiet Your Heart, (USA: Walking with Purpose, Inc., 2019) 64.