This Week’s GOSPEL PASSAGE: Mark 8:31-38
Questions to Ponder [adapted from Ashes to Fire Adult Bible Study Guide]
- If Jesus had chosen not to take up the cross, would it have been disobedience of God’s calling and leading?
- Do you think Jesus had a choice in whether to pick up His cross or not?
- What would have happened if Jesus decided not to follow the way of the cross?
- Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (v. 34). What do you think He meant by that?
- How does the call to pick up your cross play out in your daily life?
Record your thoughts in your Ashes to Fire journal.
Life Application [adapted from Ashes to Fire Adult Bible Study Guide]
- Think of three to five practical ways God is calling you to pick up your cross and follow Christ. Share your responses with a friend or accountability partner and write them in you journal, referring to them often.
- Write a prayer, or pray silently, that God would help you to pick up your cross and follow our Lord each day.
For additional Scripture reading and study:
Faithfully Yours Forever 
■Do you think Jesus had a choice in whether to pick up His cross or not?
Yes! We all have choices. Jesus was no exception.
■How does the call to pick up your cross play out in your daily life?
The expression has always bothered me a bit, but The Message says, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the eal you? For what could you ever trade your soul?”
Although to me “picking up my cross” doesn’t look like picking up a cross and being crucified, there are choices to be made every day. They come with “to-follows!” In other words, whatever I choose to do will be followed by an immediate result or someone else’s reaction. We are very comfortable when our choices end with good things; however, that is not always what occurs.
When my action leads to an unpleasantness, deserved or not, and I can tell ahead of time it might happen, I suppose the decision to do what in my heart I know is right is “picking up my cross.”
I tend to see it as just doing the next right thing.
I think we have each been called, by God, to do something to help build His kingdom. We have the power to choose if we are going to “pick up that cross” [over what we might otherwise want to do] and follow Jesus’ example of obedience to the will of the Father or not. For me, it is not about being successful, although we might hope we will be; it is about being faithful to what He has asked me to do.
Simply stated, God has asked me to love Him, to love others, and to tell others how much He loves me and them.