Why I Carry a 12 Ft Cross Around My City?

In today’s episode, I am going to answer the question, "Why I carry a 12 ft cross around my city?" 

Transcript

In today’s episode, I am going to answer the question, "Why I carry a 12 ft cross around my city?"  If you haven’t figured it out already, I occasionally carry a 12 ft. cross around the city, and of course I often get asked why I carry it. So I thought I would just do an episode dedicated to this and explain why.  

Hopefully the biggest thing you get out of my story on why I carry the cross, is that the best strategy when reaching others is to do what Jesus tells you to do. Plain and simple! And if he tells you to do something foolish or something that doesn't make sense, do it. 

The Bible is filled with stories of God commanding or instructing people to do things that don’t make sense, but the end result is always God coming through and bearing the fruit that He wants.

Let’s start with Noah. God instructed him to build a 450 ft. boat because he was going to destroy the earth. It is estimated that it took Noah anywhere from 50-100 years to build the ark! Can you imagine what people thought of him? They must have thought he was absolutely crazy. 

Next is Moses. There is story after story of God instructing Moses to do things that don't make sense. God telling Moses to throw down his staff and it turned into a snake. Commanding the slow talking Moses to go and rescue his people from the powerful Egyptians. Moses and the ten plagues and watching some of the greatest miracles in history. Followed by God telling Moses to raise his hands over the Red Sea and the sea splits apart so the Israelites can walk through it! Commanding Moses to strike a rock so that he can give the people water in the wilderness. Telling Moses to throw a piece of wood in bitter water so the water would be clean to drink. Telling Moses he will feed the multitudes with mana from heaven. Telling Moses to build a bronze snake so when people look at it, they will be healed from snake bites. Do you think Moses just right off the bat said, great ideas! In the beginning, Moses fought God on his instructions. It didn’t make sense but he started to learn to obey God.

How about Joshua? God instructing Joshua to take the Ark of the Covenant to the Jordan river and telling him the waters will stop so they can cross. 
God commanding Joshua to walk around the city of Jericho seven times and yell and then the walls will fall down. 

Gideon and his 32,000 men were outnumbered by more than four to one against the Midianite army. God told Gideon he had too many soldiers because they would boast that they saved themselves with their own strength. So Gideon announced that all scared soldiers should go home. Twenty-two thousand soldiers went home. That left 10,000 men. God thought that was still too many so he had Gideon send even more home. God settled for 300 men and God defeated the Midianite army.

There are so many of these stories in the Old Testament and I hate to skip the stories of Elijah and Elisha, but let's move on to the New Testament. 

God telling Mary, through an angel, that she will be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and have a baby who will be the son of God! Peter casting his net into the water when they hadn't caught fish all night and seeing the miraculous catch of fish.  Jesus telling the servants to go and fill the jars with water so he could turn water into wine. Jesus telling his disciples to feed 5 thousand people with 5 pieces of bread and two fish. Jesus healing the paralyzed man. “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” Jesus telling Peter to go down to the lake and throw in a line and open the mouth of the first fish and that he will find a large silver coin so he could pay the tax. Jesus instructing his disciples to go out two by two so they can perform the miracles that Jesus was doing. 

Do we not think all of these people questioned God? Of course they did. But they learned to trust what God was telling them to do. If fact, they did not bear any fruit unless they obeyed what God was telling them to do. 

So many of the stories of the Bible do not make sense! And that is what is so beautiful about it. If you read the miracle stories of the Bible, God is often telling people to do things that practically do not make any sense but end up producing amazing fruit. I don’t know why God chose to do it this way. Maybe like the reasoning in the Gideon story, so that He can get the credit and history isn’t filled up with man-made successes or achievements. 

So why did I start to carry the cross? One day, around 15 years ago, our team was praying together. We were specifically praying for ways to connect with hungry people who we believed God had prepared and were open to learning about Him. We were trying so many practical things that just didn’t seem to work. Most of the time when we thought we had come up with a great strategy, it just didn’t seem to produce any fruit. 

On this particular day in prayer, I got a vision of carrying a cross. I don’t know where that vision came from or how it popped up in my mind. Maybe 10 years before I had heard of a guy name Keith Wheeler, who is a good friend of mine now, who carries the cross all around the world, but that’s the only person at that time I had ever known of doing anything like this.   

After our prayer time, I told my team about the vision and the reaction was not very good to say the least. Lots of fear, hesitancy, and doubt from all of us that I had actually heard from God. So basically we decided to take three days to pray about it and let God confirm it. We were pretty much hoping inside that He wouldn’t confirm it so we wouldn’t have to do it!

There was one particular girl on our team who was especially scared and petrified to do this and I don’t blame her. On the third day, she goes into a Christian bookstore and a woman comes up to her who she did not know and she says, “ I just feel like God wants to tell you something. I feel like you’re supposed to check out this movie and it’s a documentary about a man who carries the cross all around the world and his name is Arthur Blessitt."  The girl on my team just broke down in tears. First, because now she believed she could do it because God had spoken to her. And second, she was just amazed that God would answer our very specific prayer. We were all amazed! And that was really enough for our team. You can imagine the hesitancy of being asked to carry a cross, and now gaining great faith that God really wanted us to do this. 

I don't carry the cross because of some great idea I was excited about, or because I think it is cool. Believe me, it’s not!! To this day, when I am not in the right mindset, I can feel incredibly foolish before and while I’m carrying the cross. I can only imagine what my high school friends think of me because I kind of grew up in a quote unquote "cool crowd" and I know that most of those people probably think I’m crazy. That is a very weird feeling.   

I also can’t imagine what even Christians think. Even what you’re thinking of me right now as you listen to my story. Carrying the cross is a very humbling experience, because often times, everything in me does not want to be carrying that Cross and I have to completely die to myself emotionally and even physically.  I have taken the cross in some very dangerous places and one of our prayers every time is “Lord, if I have to give up my life today, so be it, we want to spread your message.” That is a freeing feeling, when you don't fear anything. 

With all of the feeling foolish, the humiliation, the fear, and all that goes with it; when I carry it, again because I believe Jesus told me to carry it, 99% of the time it turns into a huge blessing. It feels like I’m walking with Jesus. I get to be out on the streets with the unreached. The unchurched. I get a front row seat and get to watch Jesus move. I get to meet hungry people! Getting to meet hungry people is a huge deal. One of the hardest things, at least for me, is living life thinking people are not hungry for Jesus in America. But every time I take the cross out, I get to meet people hungry for Jesus.  

So when people ask me, why do I do it? It’s because Jesus told me to do it and nothing else. That is what I want you to hear. So again the lesson I am trying to share is this, when you are wondering, what is the best strategy to reach people; the answer is, whatever God tells you to do. It might not make sense. It might seem extremely foolish, but God is looking for hearts who will listen to His direction and I promise you, if you haven’t seen a lot of fruit in your life as far as reaching the unreached, doing what Jesus tells you to do is the key!

Of course many of you may be wondering, "How do I find out what Jesus wants me to do?" That can be a tough question. Obviously pray and ask Him. Read the Bible. Also God speaks through other people or other people's stories. My hope is that God can speak to you through my story right now as you listen. 

Often times I’ve been inspired by reading missionary biographies. Not necessarily any specific ideas, but it just feels like God is speaking to me when I read their stories. 

I've been inspired by keeping up with the persecuted church. I get great inspiration from them! There are some great ministries out there who support and tell stories of the persecuted church. The Voice of the Martyrs does a great job with this. Again, it feels like God speaks to me through their stories. 

I know many times God has spoken to me through listening to someone's testimony.  My good friend Jim Yost was speaking at a conference in Waco called World Mandate, and he was talking about how they were planting churches in Brothels in Indonesia. I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that this could happen. It wasn’t on my grid. And right there it just hit me. “Wow we can plant churches anywhere.” It was a life changing moment and a life changing moment as far as perspective. We not only started Bible studies in brothels in Dallas, it really gave us the confidence that we could start them anywhere because God's heart is to reach people. 

God spoke to me through many of these things, but that can get tricky. Just because it is a really good idea doesn't mean you’re supposed to do it, so you have to be careful with that. And just be obedient to what he is asking YOU to do.

Again, it is important to remember that God might want you to do something that doesn’t make sense. Don’t let that scare you. Actually you should be excited. That probably means it is from God. Dream and ask God. If he tells you to do cartwheels in the middle of the street and tells you someone is going to come up to you who is hungry for Jesus, then do it! 

I’ll tell you one cross story to illustrate doing what He tells us to do. At this point in my life I had carried the cross for a few years, but I was having doubts and feeling like I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was supposed to carry the cross the next day with a group of people from a church. I usually like going by myself or with one other person, so I was kind of hesitant to bring a big group of people especially in this immigrant community. 

I had actually called the leader the night before and said I was canceling our morning outreach because I just didn't feel like I was up for it. To be honest, I just wasn't in the right place in my heart and mind, and fear and embarrassment came on me and I just felt like such a fool. 

This leader called me out and he said that’s not from God. He challenged me to pray that night and plan on the outreach happening. I prayed that night, but it really wasn’t until the next morning in prayer that I started to have this peace come over me. After prayer, I felt filled with faith, but was still a little nervous. What is this immigrant community going to think of me? But I remembered what God promised me. That He would bring hungry people to me if I carried that cross. That promise. The obedience of His instructions. That is what makes me move. 

I meet this group in a parking lot. We prayed and then we get the cross out of my truck, and put it together, which takes few minutes. We then start to walk with it. I literally walk 20 feet across the street and I can hear and see a Hindu man yelling, “I want Jesus, I want Jesus”,  and he runs up to me with his hands raised in the air and the next thing I know, I’m in his apartment with his entire family, teaching them about Jesus. All less than 30 seconds of carrying the cross. And it all comes after me being completely fearful of simply doing what Jesus told me to do. Look what He can do when we obey his voice. I could have missed out on that incredible opportunity to share with this beautiful family.

I have so many stories similar to this, with and without the cross, where we simply listened to what Jesus was telling us to do, and it ended up producing amazing fruit. God actually makes it pretty easy. We just need to listen to His voice!

If you have any questions, you can contact us through our website at lovingallpeoples.com. And please remember to follow our podcast to receive upcoming episodes. Thanks for the listen everyone. This is the Loving All Peoples Podcast.