The Cross

A good portion of today and this evening have been spent preparing for tomorrow's second ZOE mission meeting.  Yes, I'll admit, I'm a little behind already...

So one of the things we need to do for this mission trip is assess why the cross is important to us.  The main theme of the outreach program we'll be doing is The Cross.  And so as we embark on this task, it's important to think about what the cross means to us individually and to really reflect on its meaning in our own lives.  We were given a short article to read by J.C. Ryle (1816 - 1900) titled The Cross of Christ. Here is an excerpt from this article:

"Reader, mark what I say again. You may know a good deal about Christ, by a kind of head knowledge. You may know who He was, and where He was born, and what He did. You may know His miracles, His sayings, His prophecies, and His ordinances. You may know how He lived, and how He suffered, and how He died. But unless you know the power of Christ's cross by experience,—unless you know and feel within that the blood shed on that cross has washed away your own particular sins—unless you are willing to confess that your salvation depends entirely on the work that Christ did upon the cross,—unless this be the case, Christ will profit you nothing. The mere knowing Christ's name will never save you. You must know His cross and His blood, or else you will die in your sins."

This was a good reminder as I think about and write about what the cross means to me.

"As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
- Galatians 6:14