Humbled by Adversity, We Learn the Deception

At work I have my cross to bear--difficult people, broken processes, broken people, and difficult processes. At home, my wife bears a heavier cross--difficult neighbors, broken appliances, a broken body, and difficult children. And some days they all misfire at once.

Yet the heaviest cross is mine, and it's that I cannot take Kristin's cross from her. But what I should do, and a good head of home will do, is ensure that she is bearing only the cross God gives. Neither I, nor anyone else, should add to it. But I must call her to take up her cross and follow Christ.

Calvin is especially strong here. Here are powerful reasons for bearing your cross, excerpted from his Institutes (Book 3).

REASON 1: Our Cross Conforms Us to Christ
"Though the Son was dear to the Father above all others, the Son in whom he was "well pleased," yet we see, that far from being treated gently and indulgently, we may say his whole life was nothing else than a kind of perpetual cross. Why then should we exempt ourselves from that condition to which Christ our Head behoved to submit? It affords us great consolation in hard and difficult circumstances, which men deem evil and adverse, to think that we are holding fellowship with the sufferings of Christ; that as he passed to celestial glory through a labyrinth of many woes, so we too are conducted thither through various tribulations.

REASON 2: Our Cross Rids Us of Self-Confidence
"Since we indulge a stupid and empty confidence in the flesh, God visits us with disgrace, or poverty, or bereavement, or disease, or other afflictions. Feeling altogether unable to support them, we forthwith, in so far as regards ourselves, give way, and thus humbled learn to invoke his strength, which alone can enable us to bear up under a weight of affliction. Humbled by adversity, we learn the deception. It is surely plain how necessary it is for us to bear the cross. It is of no little importance to be rid of your self-love, and made fully conscious of your weakness; so impressed with a sense of your weakness as to learn to distrust yourself so as to transfer your confidence to God, reclining on him with such heartfelt confidence as to trust in his aid, and continue invincible to the end, standing by his grace so as to perceive that he is true to his promises, and so assured of the certainty of his promises as to be strong in hope.

REASON 3: Our Cross Frees Us From Half-Hearted Joy
"God well knows how strongly we are inclined by nature to a slavish love of this world, in order to prevent us from clinging too strongly to it, he employs the fittest reason for calling us back, and shaking off our lethargy. Our stupidity! Our minds are so dazzled with the glare of wealth, power, and honours, that they can see no farther. The heart also, engrossed with avarice, ambition, and lust, is weighed down and cannot rise above them. In short, the whole soul,
ensnared by the allurements of the flesh, seeks its happiness on the earth. To meet this disease, the Lord makes his people sensible of the vanity of the present life, by a constant proof of its miseries."

We have a tendancy to want to throw-off our cross, thinking we'll then enjoy a better life. But, how useful and beneficial our crosses are to the good life! "We must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God." (Acts 24:22)