Lamentations 5:1-4 English Standard Version

Restore Us to Yourself, O Lord

¹ Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace!
² Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
³ We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
⁴ We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought.

We left off yesterday speaking about personal perspective. This led me to search the scriptures for something that is personal to each of us in different ways. How that can happen is in the issues of the life we each have lived and what has befallen us. It is different for each of us.

Disgrace is the lament of the author but not the only emotional reaction to life events. It is up to us to confess how we feel about the events of life that have shaped our histories and perspectives. It is personal and while we may find others with the same experience we should be aware that others might lament in different ways and draw their own conclusions.

What should be common for all of us is the restoration of relationship with our God. In this we will find it is a matter of personal perspective because we are all coming from a different place, even if we are neighbors.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 English Standard Version (ESV)

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Our past does not dictate our future, no matter what has happened to us and how we feel about it.

Our personal perspective is the road we take to come to the same place, unity in faith in Christ.

Matthew 16:24 English Standard Version

Take Up Your Cross and Follow Jesus

²⁴ Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Here is an answer to what Jesus meant when He said “if anyone would come after me.”

John 14:12 English Standard Version (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

I will not limit God’s ability to speak meaning into a disciple’s heart as to any personal meaning. This is why I said, here is an answer, not the answer.

Jesus was going to be with the Father and would not be coming again until the end of the church age. As such we come after Christ to perform the duties of church age priests. “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” Heb.7:17

This is an order, i.e. disciples, which has a continuing duty to serve the people after the likeness of the founder.

Now is the time to address our personal cross which we must take up. Our cross is not the cross of Christ. That cross was the symbol of His propitiation for us and the forgiveness of all sin. Our personal cross cannot replicate the act of God performed that day. It is a personal symbol for making personal sacrifices in our lives. Those sacrifices do nothing to save our soul but rather indicates a preference for the needs of others over our own needs.

Carry the cross with humility, never ask anyone to carry it. If we crumble under the weight of it another Simon will come along by the grace of God, to help. We bare one another’s burdens in this way.

As this is one answer, do not allow it to limit God’s ability to speak to us in personal perspectives.