Message
Jesus said in Luke 9:23:
... If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
If you will truly follow Christ, you must be ready to suffer for His sake. No one follows Christ without taking up his or her cross. An evangelist might have told you to just give your life to Christ and everything will be beautiful. That is true, everything in your life will indeed be more beautiful because you have given your life to Christ. However, there will still be some suffering. Jesus Christ said that when we come to Him, He will take our heavy yokes from us, but He never said that He will leave us without a yoke. Rather, in Matthew 11:29-30, He said:
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Jesus said that He will give us His own yoke to carry. His yoke is lighter than the one we were carrying before we got born again, but it is still a yoke.
The reason many people fall when temptations come is that they were not prepared to suffer for Christ. You must be so determined to follow Christ that you literally say, "If I perish, I perish!"(Esther 4:16). When you do this, your strength will be great, and you will not faint in the day of adversity (Proverbs 24:10). Those that do not faint in the day of adversity always enjoy great benefits when the adversity is over.
In Genesis 39, after all that Joseph had gone through in the hands of his brothers, the biggest test of his life came; the wife of his master wanted him to lay with her. He said, "How can I do this thing and sin against God?" (Genesis 39:9). He was willing to face whatever consequence will come with Him following and obeying God. He went to jail, but as soon as God saw that he carried His yoke willingly, He arranged for him to meet Pharaoh, and by the time we get to Genesis 41, he had become the Prime Minister of the greatest nation on earth at that time.
Your destiny depends on the answer to this question: are you ready to suffer for Christ?