Then after talking about the betrayal and the rivalry of ministry, Paul says that whether Christ is preached in pretense or truth, He is preached. That is enough for him and he rejoices.
How do you move from being hurt to rejoicing? The answer is: you take up your cross. That is not an easy answer, but it is necessary
This is what Christ commanded us to do when he said that we must take up our cross: “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’” (Matt. 16:24-25. See also Mark 8:34 and Luke 9:23-24).
Advertisement
The person who is hurt and not moving on to embrace that pain as a means for God to do something in his life, is the person who is stuck and the clock has stopped. The reason is that he is not denying himself. In fact, the very thing he wants to do is feed self — my rights, they hurt me, they should do this, they said this about me, I need to be justified, I need to be taken care of, I was offended. But Jesus says, “Take up your cross, follow me, deny yourself, whoever seeks to save his life will loose it, whoever looses his life for My sake will find it."
We want to think about cross bearing as physical pain, and it is. We want to think about taking up our cross as standing up for truth and maybe taking some hits for it, maybe even being a martyr for it. Throughout church history many have done so. But the context of the cross is betrayal. The context of the cross is the pain of being hurt by those close to us.
Zechariah 13:6 speaks of “the wounds I received in the house of my friends.” This is the painful life that the people who came to my office were speaking of. This is the pain you may feel in your heart. This may be where some of you are living today.
Sadly, some people live by the words of the late playwright Tennessee Williams who wrote, “We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.” 1
God does not call us to live in distrust, but to live in faith in Christ. It is not that I implicitly trust all men, it is that I trust God in all situations. And this makes life sweet.
Recently, I was told about a friend from my past who had moved. I asked where he was going to church and was told that he goes nowhere. He speaks of past betrayals, past pain in churches, and says that he will not allow himself to be hurt again. He distrusts. It is now his defense against betrayal. His philosophy of life was related by his ten-year-old son. What a lesson he is getting.