But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 6:14
"Every cross men bear in that way is hard. If that were all that is in the cross, those crosses ought to have served the purpose; for they were bitter and cruel enough. 
Then there must be something else in the cross besides hardness.
Popularly the idea is that anything that is a discomfort—that a person doesn’t like to do—is a cross.
It makes no difference how much people talk about the Lord; how much they say they believe in Christ; how much they call themselves Christians; the setting up of a cross aside from the cross of Christ, is opposition to Christ.
The trouble was that we had a cross in the place of the cross of Christ,—a substitute for it."
E.J.Waggoner