1 Cor 6:19-20 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. ESV

As the bride of Christ, have we recognized that our bodies truly are the temple of the Holy Spirit or are we so taken up with “Christian work” or “good works” that we have left no time Jesus, whose work it is in the first place? How’s your time for Him the first thing in the morning or the last thing at night? How we answer those questions has a great deal with defining “our cross” and what Jesus commanded us to do with it.

Matt 16:24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ESV

The cross that Jesus speaks to is the deliberate recognition of our life given to and dedicated to Him. We have to take up that cross (our life) every day and prove that we are no longer our own; prove that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit; and prove that our individual independence is gone and all that is left is our passionate devotion to Jesus.

We have not been designed for ourselves, for our self-realization. We have been designed for our Lord and Master. The problem we face in taking up our cross is that all around us we are tempted and pressured to give ourselves to a cause. And we do that in the face of Jesus’ warning of the consequences:

Luke 9:24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. ESV

We need to take up our cross and lose our life daily as we identify with the cross of Christ and glorify God in our body.