pick up your cross?

Ive been asking this week, what does it mean to be a follower fo christ? Which is so odd to me because I feel like its something I've said Ive been doing for some time But it hit me today that its something I should always be asking. And while I was running I was struck with the thought the Christ is a person and that he is alive and that I get to be much like the disciples that walked with him. That we are in a relationship and all that comes with it. That we are going to wrestle and I am going to make mistakes and its going to be an adventure and that our interaction is of utmost importance and that being a christian doesnt meaning agreeing with the statement that Jesus Christ died for our sins but it means going after and getting to know and professing to follow this unpredictable, loving, unconventional rabbi that lived a long time ago but still is alive and has given us his spirit and that somehow because we have his spirit we not only interact with him but in some crazy sense ARE him that we are living breathing parts of his very body and share the exact same spirit he had and that every word that he said and everything he did impacts us directly. And I have decided that it is far more mundane and revolutionary than I ever dreamed. It is mundane in the sense that it is here and now where we already are and our lives on the outside may not look very exciting or radical but it is revolutionary because the call is to love the people who are already in our lives in a way that does not exist outside of christ. And also that there is a calling for our lives. Something real and specific that we are each being shaped to do and if we do the thing and live the life God has designed specifically for us, we will not have that gnawing desire for meaning and prpose. But I have also been chewing on a very wise thing that was said to me just the other day: "I am quite convinced that one of the devils most successful tactics is to keep christians busy doing good things that keep them from doing the thing God has called them to do. And so it is almost guaranteed that I am going to be consistently tempted to not stick with anything , but to move from mission to mission, looking for my calling and that willkeep me from doing the thing God has clearly set up and equipped me for.
There is no formula to being a disciple. There are clear directions, namely the word. Everything is in there.
In Matthew 16 he says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
I dont know exactly what it means to take up my cross. But I do know that the cross means death. So it means I have to die to myself and all my plans and reasoning and ideas will be replaced with obedience to God. But it is hard to figure out what that looks like day in, day out. I guess it starts with all the stuff Im clinging to, with taking prayer seriously, with loving people in a way that is not fun or easy or self serving. And I think with other people, its a matter of listening and asking what they are living for. And if they are looking for something to live for, humbling saying well this is who I live for, and I know that he is already in love with you and already after you and I think its a matter of really getting to know people who are Christian and wrestling together with what it means for our life.
And it also means getting to know the word and the law and the covenant and making that more central than my feelings and my thoughts and my tendency to swing through extremes.
The other thing that hit me throughout my time in haiti is that you can be a missionary in haiti and not be saying, "thy will be done" and you can be a student at nc state or a mom in chesapeake or a young professional and be saying daily "thy will be done" and submitting to the lordship of christ and be living out discipleship more than the "missionary."
And I think thats beautiful that its not about the job you have or where you are but that you are concerned with your specific call and joyfully go after it with your whole heart no matter how small or huge that it is.
Whe I stop asking these basic questions of what it means to be a follower or what God wants for my life daily or how the little things of the present can glorify him or think that I have a grasp on the gospel I am in trouble.
But for now I'm still wrestling. Still being humbled. Still learning obedience and my strong resistance to it. Still falling in love.