Shoes?

No, I did not title my blog after the name of a type of casual shoe popular in the late-eighties. I am also not planning on teaching any classes on cross-stitch to elderly ladies at the Civic Center.

CROSS T R A I N I N G
The personal blog of Jonathan William Kopp is to be entitled CrossTraining.

I choose this, because that is where I am at in my life up to this point. I am in CrossTraining. God has been and will forever be working me over with the concept that all I have to boast in in this life is because of the cross. Every good and every bad thing I have, I have because of the cross, because Christ purchased it for me. Therefore, I name this blog CrossTraining…that I might be ever mindful of my quest of bringing others to the cross and taking up my own cross...daily for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The CrossTraining concept communicates my fledgling pursuit to place every area of my life into perspective under the importance of the cross. Because of the cross, I work and live. Because of the cross, I gather with others in worship. It is because of the cross that I am what I am. CrossTraining describes all that in a short statement. Cross Training to me is the business every believer is in. It is teaching others to magnify the supremacy of the cross in every area of their life. I believe that no one can think too much on the cross, because at the cross there is deep conviction, humble servitude, heavenly awe, salvation and desire to evangelize.

WHY THE CROSS?
The theme verse for this blog is to be Galatians 6:14. “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

As I study the life of Paul, I am amazed. The man was staggeringly brilliant. He kept track of churches miles apart, he was a powerful leader, he knew suffering continually, and he was able to strive till the end. I look at His life, and I find something intriguing. One passion. One truth. One consistent pursuit. The Cross. Paul was consumed with the sacrifice of his beloved savior at Calvary. How else could he have lived his life with the fervor and undying energy? He said in Phillipians, “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Phillipians 1:7-8)

“Let us abide hard by the cross and search the mystery of His wounds” (C. H. SPURGEON) because, “the blood-stained cross is the blazing center of the glory of God.” (JOHN PIPER) “…It is the fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough to it for its sparks to fall on us.” (JOHN STOTT) And in all our searching, “The Spirit does not take [us] beyond the cross, but ever more deeply into it.” (J. KNOX CHAMBLIN)

Join me in CrossTraining.