The flesh is my predicament.
The cross is my solution . . . and resolution.

His bloody cross . . . but also mine.

In Jesus' cross, my sins were paid for.
My death accomplished.
But in MY cross, my flesh is executed.
Slain for its hopeless evil.

For Jesus did not die in our place.
He died for our account,
and that is a far different thing.

Though we went to the grave IN Him,
and the "old sinner" died,
we still have our death to bear . . .
a living visit to our personal tomb.

The Cross is somehow living still and
is the tall and menacing sentinel
over all that is God,
against all that is human. 

Christ is ever and
always seeking to expose and crucify the flesh,
to let us see the enemy within.
Only our desperate consent to its death
brings the power of the
Cross into the core of the old man. 

In MY own cross, my selfishness is butchered,
my ego embarrassed,
and my determination, crushed.
My goodness, too, is cruelly tortured . . .
as it should be.

The practical cross of daily confrontation
is that donkey in the path of
my Balaam appointment with
God's enemy.

My cross is the King Saul to my
David's heart,
the insane one who hates me
with murder's rage . . .
for my love.

My personal cross is the whale of God's control
in the escape plans to run away
from my own fulfillment. 

You can find what you covet by what God touches,
by what is destroyed . . . spoiled . . .
and taken away.

The Cross attacks your treasure.

The cross is perfect, for it comes for that which
pampers the soul of my selfishness.
It searches out what I love and
kills the rivals of God.

The cross . . . crosses my will,
destroys my dream,
dishonors my reputation
and humiliates my ego.

And I must distinguish between the cross
of my legitimate demise and
His enemy's schemes of defeat
to shame God through my life.

To the One, I must surrender totally unto my own end.
To the other I must resist to his ruin. 

And those two forces, the cross and the enemy
live in the same situation,
often in the same person.

They both, the cross and the enemy,
are after my demise.
I will die.
Death - before the grave - pursues me
relentlessly . . . daily, hourly.
No choice. I will die.
The only question: for whom?

The choice is mine alone.
Will I die for my soul's Lover,
who died in Love for me?
Or will I die at the hand of His
mortal enemy,
by the dishonor and oblivion
in which he takes such delight.

Will I die to live? Or live and die?

For the cross is my liberty.
My jailer is not the enemy of God.
My prison is the tyranny of
my own flesh.

My cruel unfeeling master: the
selfish drives of my deviant parents,
Adam and Eve, whose likeness I bear. 

The key is in the door, not obscure
or hidden. Plain and given.
Before my face . . . in the
real and the practical.

It is my personal cross, ordained by
God's perfect knowledge of me.
The key waits there for me to turn
it and walk out into
Life Unspeakable and its joy. 

But I must turn that key upon my Self.
It will pierce me bloody and
kill my independence.

Even in its mystery,
my hidden soul comprehends
the ominous presence of the cross
and avoids instinctively
the very Key of my fulfillment.

I will run. I will lie. I will hide as
David did in the face of his
incessantly cruel cross . . . Saul.

Only when I die to the self-worshiping idol
of me, will I rejoice in and, yes,
even love the hand that slays me.

I must know that the cross spells liberty
whenever I consent to welcome it.
I must experience the reward of dying

David's "cross" named Saul finally died
in the very shame and humiliation that had been
planned and drooled over for David.

But instead of rejoicing over the end of his
"cross," David loudly lamented its end.
David had come to love his cross.
To love even the instrument of it -
in the person of Saul,
to clutch the very two edged sword
that pierced his every ambition,
and slew his freedom.

For the cross comes to
take our liberty in order to free us.

To hound us into a corner of helplessness
with only one way of escape:
the grave of our flesh's
lust for all the forms of fatness.

The cross swallows us like a whale and
forces us to face the self-preservation
that is - in reality -
the loss of our glory,
the suicide of our destiny,
and the end of our shining story.

By his willingness to die, David came to care more
for Saul's sick soul than for his own suffering.
Valid proof of David's liberty,
only achieved through death.

He saw Saul through the eyes of God,
into the tragedy of his lost potential,
of the splendor he missed
and David wailed . . .

"Your glory, O Israel, lies
slain on your heights.
How the mighty have fallen!
For there the shield of Saul -
no longer rubbed with oil."

David - by the unjust death of his liberty -
had vision to see God's heart
and found there the true
picture of the Saul,
a mighty warrior, but one
who refused his own cross of . . .
David!

Copyright © 1999 Martha Kilpatrick