…Mark 8:34-35 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
The only way to follow Christ, is to first deny yourself. That is, to count your old desires as not worthy of consideration in order to make room for the desires of Christ. If your mind and heart are full of your own desires, what Christ wants in you and from you will find no room. There’s not enough space in your heart for both.
And then, you must decide daily to pick up your cross, which represents all the trials and tribulations that you will encounter that day. This whole process of following Christ is counted as losing your life in order to gain life. Death and resurrection. But whose actual death and resurrection?
Mark 9:30-31 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
When a person believes in Jesus Christ as Lord, and believes he died and rose again, his death and resurrection get accounted to the one who believes. God reconciles that person to himself, and thus that person now belongs to God. And that life of following Christ begins. This life, this work of salvation, requires a person humble himself before God in absolute dependence…
