Walking in the Word, in Christ: from Jesus Calling: by Sarah Young

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,

Matthew 11:28-29

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

    I AM the resurrection and the Life; all lasting Life emanates from Me. People search for life in many wrong ways: chasing after fleeting pleasures, accumulating possessions and wealth, trying to deny the inevitable effects of aging. Meanwhile, I freely offer abundant Life to everyone who turns toward Me. As you come to Me and take My yoke upon you, I fill you with My very Life. This is how I choose to live in the world and accomplish My purposes. This is also how I bless you with Joy unspeakable and full of Glory. The Joy is Mine, and the Glory is Mine; but I bestow them on you as you live in My presence, inviting Me to live fully in you. 

1 Peter 1:8-9

Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

The Cross of Christ: by Andrew Murray

have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

The cross of Christ is His greatest glory.  Because He humbled Himself to the death of the cross, God has highly exalted Him (Phil 2:8-9).  The cross was the power that conquered Satan and sin.
The Christian shares with Christ in the cross.  The crucified Christ lives in him through the Holy Spirit, and the spirit of the cross inspires him.  He lives as one who has died with Christ.  As he realizes the power of Christ's crucifixion, he lives as one who has died to the world and to sin, and the power becomes a reality in his life.  It is as the Crucified One that Christ lives in him.
Our Lord said to His disciples, "Take up your cross and follow Me..." (Matt. 16:24).  Did they understand this?  They had seen men carrying a cross, and they knew it meant a painful death.  All His life, Christ bore His cross - the death sentence that He would die for the world.  Similarly, each Christian must bear his cross, acknowledge that he is worthy of death, and believe that he is crucified with Christ and that the Crucified One lives in him.  "Our old man was crucified with Him" (Rom. 6:6).  "Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24).  When we have accepted this life of the cross, we will be able to say with Paul, "But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14).
This is a deep spiritual truth.  Think and pray over it, and the Holy Spirit will teach you.  Let the disposition of Christ on the cross, His humility, His sacrifice of all worldly honor, His spirit of self-denial, take possession of you.  The power of His death will work in you, you will become like Him in His death, and you will "know Him and the power of His resurrection" (Phil. 3:10).  Take time, dear reader, so that Christ through His Spirit may reveal Himself as the Crucified One.

Sharing in the Atonement: by Oswald Chambers

God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ… —Galatians 6:14

The gospel of Jesus Christ always forces a decision of our will. Have I accepted God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ? Do I have even the slightest interest in the death of Jesus? Do I want to be identified with His death— to be completely dead to all interest in sin, worldliness, and self? Do I long to be so closely identified with Jesus that I am of no value for anything except Him and His purposes? The great privilege of discipleship is that I can commit myself under the banner of His Cross, and that means death to sin. You must get alone with Jesus and either decide to tell Him that you do not want sin to die out in you, or that at any cost you want to be identified with His death. When you act in confident faith in what our Lord did on the cross, a supernatural identification with His death takes place immediately. And you will come to know through a higher knowledge that your old life was “crucified with Him” (Romans 6:6). The proof that your old life is dead, having been “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), is the amazing ease with which the life of God in you now enables you to obey the voice of Jesus Christ.

Every once in a while our Lord gives us a glimpse of what we would be like if it were not for Him. This is a confirmation of what He said— “…without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). That is why the underlying foundation of Christianity is personal, passionate devotion to the Lord Jesus. We mistake the joy of our first introduction into God’s kingdom as His purpose for getting us there. Yet God’s purpose in getting us into His kingdom is that we may realize all that identification with Jesus Christ means.

The Cross & LIFE: by TA Sparks

I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. Philippians 3:10

Do recognize that the Cross is the end of the risen life, and not only the beginning. If you forget everything else, remember that. The Cross is the end of the risen life, as well as the beginning: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death." People have been to me with Philippians 3 and have asked: "Why did Paul put death at the end? Surely it ought to be right the other way round – 'That I may be conformed to His death, and know Him in the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.'" No, there is no mistake. The order is of the Holy Spirit. The power of His resurrection presupposes that there has been a death, but the very resurrection-life leads to the Cross. The Holy Spirit in the power of the risen life is always leading you back to the Cross, to conformity to His death. It is the very property of Life to rule out all that belongs to death. It is the very power of resurrection to bring us back to the place where death is constantly overcome.

That place is none other than the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ where the natural life is put aside. So Paul says: "...becoming conformed unto His death," which means: to have the ground of death continuously and progressively removed; and that, again, as we have said, is the fruit of living union with Him. It would be a poor look-out for you and for me were we to be conformed to His death in entirety apart from the power of resurrection in us, apart from our already knowing the Life of the Lord. Where would be our hope? What is it that is the power of our survival when the Cross is made more real in our experience? There would be no survival were it not that His risen Life is in us. So Paul prays: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection..." and that means conformity to His death without utter destruction. The end of the risen life is the Cross. The Holy Spirit is always working in relation to the Cross, in order that the power of His resurrection may be increasingly manifested in us.

The Collision of God and Sin: by Oswald Chambers

…who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree… —1 Peter 2:24

The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross— He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.

The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus— He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh…” from “…He made Him…to be sin for us…” (1 Timothy 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.

The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.

The Cross We Bear Must Be Assumed Voluntarily: by AW Tozer

For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake. Philippians 1:29

In the Christian faith there is a real sense in which the cross of Christ embraces all crosses and the death of Christ encompasses all deaths: “If one died for all, then were all dead….”

This is in the judicial working of God in redemption. The Christian as a member of the body of Christ is crucified along with his divine Head. Before God every true believer is reckoned to have died when Christ died. All subsequent experience of personal crucifixion is based upon this identification with Christ on the cross.

But in the practical, everyday outworking of the believer’s crucifixion his own cross is brought into play. “Let him… take up his cross.” That is obviously not the cross of Christ. Rather, it is the believer’s own personal cross by means of which the cross of Christ is made effective in slaying his evil nature and setting him free from its power.

The believer’s own cross is one he has assumed voluntarily. Therein lies the difference between his cross and the cross on which Roman convicts died. They went to the cross against their will; he, because he chooses to do so. No Roman officer ever pointed to a cross and said, “If any man will, let him!” Only Christ said that, and by so saying He placed the whole matter in the hands of the Christian believer. Each of us, then, should count himself dead indeed with Christ and accept willingly whatever of self-denial, repentance, humility and humble sacrifice that may be found in the path of obedient daily living.

The Cross is Lifted: by Watchman Nee

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto

myself.” John 12:32

Over against the present world order, the Lord Jesus proclaims, “And I . . .” The expression contrasts sharply with what precedes it, even as the One it identifies stands in contrast with His antagonist, the prince of this world. Through the cross, through the obedience to death of Him who is God’s grain of wheat (verse 24), this world’s rule by compulsion and fear is to end with the fall of its proud ruler.

And with Christ’s springing up once more to life, there has come into being in its place a new reign of righteousness and one that is marked by a free allegiance of men to Him. With cords of love their hearts will be drawn away from a world under judgment toward Jesus the Son of Man, who though lifted up to die was by that very act lifted up to reign.