The Hard Road To Victory

A.W. Tozer wrote "In order to get to Resurrection one must first go through the Cross". He talked about how so many Christians want the Resurrection life but don't want to pay the price to get it, which is going through the Cross. Probably more than any other author, A.W. Tozer makes me think. And I've thought a lot of his statements this week. How I long for victory and resurrection life, yet one must be willing to embrace all that the cross represents. The Lord showed me one time that the Cross for the Christian represents both death and life. Death in that we must die to everything selfish and carnal, yet life also because in the Cross we can know the same kind of victorious life that Christ lived. It empowers us to live holy, just and separated lives. Yet because many Christians would rather control their own lives and destiny, few ever truly embrace the Cross, knowing that to do so means we give up our claims to ourselves and let God take control. Tonight at our cell group we talked about the suffering that Christ permits in our lives. I explained to the group that the good news is that the suffering or hard times we go through don't last forever. We are told in the Bible that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Our light affliction is but for a moment we are told. God was letting us know, and confirms it today that difficult times don't last, that joy, happiness and resurrection life is always the end result of going through hard times when we let God have His way. I call this the hard road to victory, a place that few American Christians rarely travel, yet that road has been tread by every great man and woman of God both in the Old and New Testaments. Any Christian who has ever done, or is doing anything of worth for the Lord today has traveled that road, you can't have resurrection without first having the Cross, that's the hard road to victory. And that my friends is the reality of it!