Spiritual Strength For Each Day
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
As we have already seen, the name Jordan means “the descender” or “going down.” But it also has a second meaning, namely “divider.” The Jordan divided the people of Israel from the wilderness. When Israel passed through the Jordan River, she left her old life behind in the wilderness. This is a picture of the cross. Nothing divides us so radically from our old life in the wilderness as passing through the Jordan of death. That is the sincere confession, “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Paul testified that he was divided from everything by the cross, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14).
Those who do not accept the death of Jesus through consistent separation from all that is of this world, will not be capable of experiencing the fullness of God. It is shocking to see the incapability of many Christians. They stop at the Jordan. Dear reader, pass through the Jordan today; say “yes” to the way of the Lamb, the way of death. Say, “I have decided to follow Jesus….”
