The Way of the Cross

Many of my fondest childhood recollections of spending time with my Dad, or just watching him go about his day, are of him singing, or humming, or creating songs. The lyrics of one of the old hymns he would sing (and of course we sang it often in church as well) goes like this:

I must needs go home by the way of the cross,
There's no other way but this,
I shall ne'er get sight of the Gates of Light,
If the way of the cross I miss.
Chorus: The way of the cross leads home,
The way of the cross leads home,
It is sweet to know as I onward go,
The way of the cross leads home.

"Father, I want to think rightly about the cost of being Your disciple. I want to have the moral muscle to take the path of the cross. I desire a tough and fibrous faith (as Tozer puts it). I do not want to be counted among the delicate, brittle saints who must be fed on a diet of harmless fun in order to keep them interested in Christianity."

A.W.Tozer says: "Our Lord called men to follow Him but He never made the way look easy." Indeed, quite the opposite. Jesus said: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."

Tozer asks: "When will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin? that to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self? that to follow the good way we must flee from evil? that a friend of the world is an enemy of God?"