Embrace the Cross to Find Freedom and New Life
Sometimes you need to embrace the cross to find freedom from anger and experience new life.
A 3-year-old boy pulled back and swung, hitting an elderly lady in the stomach with all his might.
At a special event, 16-year-old girl glared as she declared to the group sponsor, “You are not my mother and I don’t have to do what you say!”
A desperate 40-year-old confessed, “My anger is tearing the family apart. My marriage is in trouble—we’re separated again, my children are insecure, and I need help.” He went on to share that his father died when he was young and his mother always smoothed things out for him, but he’s discovered that that doesn’t work in his adult life.
In the last week, these have all been reported to me or been part of my experience. They all have one thing in common.
The child who has everything “smoothed out” for him is taught to expect everything in life to go his way. When it doesn’t, he doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he responds in anger. The real world doesn’t cater to individual whims, so the child isn’t prepared for a life where he doesn’t get what he wants.
To complicate matters, the child probably learns that if he gets angry enough, he’ll get what he wants. Consequently, he’s trained in anger as well as selfishness. Both lead to misery—a life of anger, bitterness, strife along with hurt and loneliness from broken relationships.
Unfortunately, lessons from years of being rewarded for negative attitudes and behaviors are not easily unlearned. But there is a cure for the adult who wants to overcome an angry, self-centered lifestyle. Jesus shows us the way.
He chose to suffer and die a terrible death for problems, sins that were not His own. He did it so we could once again enjoy intimate relationship with Him.
Anger destroys intimacy. If we want to overcome anger and restore relationships, we need to follow Jesus. He said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).
Daily. It’s a lifestyle of denying your own wishes, your self-centered life, and self-centered expectations. If you follow Jesus, you put the interests of others above your own. Daily take up your cross and die to self.
That’s not easy, but it wasn’t easy for Jesus either. Hebrews 12:2 tells us how He had the grace to embrace the cross. Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before Him.” He was given grace to take up the cross and to endure because of the reward He foresaw on the other side of the cross.
If anger is destroying your life, the joy set before you is love, joy, and peace. That longed-for life can replace the anger, bitterness, and broken relationships that are so familiar. The reward of denying self and taking up a cross of self-denial will yield a new life in place of the old.
If you want to get rid of your sinful, self-centered nature, you must follow Jesus. The first step toward reaching that joy is the choice and commitment to deny yourself and embrace the cross.
It is worth it for the joy set before you. You will not only find peace with yourself and love, joy, and peace with those around us, you will also find the favor and blessing of God. That is true joy.
Jesus said, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? (Luke 9:24-25).
By embracing the cross, you can conquer anger that is rooted in self-centeredness and expects life to go your way. You can find freedom from anger and experience love, joy, and peace.