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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
Matthew 16:24-28
Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples
and said: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up
their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it,
but whoever loses their life for Me and for the gospel will save it. What good
is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can
anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words
in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of
them when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
And He said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are
standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has
come with power.”
Mark 8:34-38, 9:1
Then He said to them all: “Whoever wants to be My
disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me. For
whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for
Me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet
lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son
of Man will be ashamed of them when He comes in His glory and in the glory of
the Father and of the holy angels.”
“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not
taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:23-27
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be
to God.
Here’s a rule I was taught from my earliest years of
being able to understand it:
You need to win to gain.
Maybe you had the same rule imbedded in you.
To get the best education, it was important for you to
get the best grades in school and there was this sense that you were competing
against your elementary and adolescent peers to have the best chance for a
bright future with college being the golden nugget. Schools have awards they
present and those awards represent winners, those who have won and gained
recognition and/or status. Scholarships get rewarded to those who have outperformed
others to win the monetary prize. And those scholarships bring people into
college where another contest awaits, this one regarding GPA’s and the
associated honors that come for those who outrank their fellow students.
Ultimately, the grand prize comes in landing that good paying job, something
that requires someone to…you got it…contend with opponents who also want that
great job. In the end, there can only be one winner.
You need to win to gain.
Here’s another case in point, this time looking at
athletics. Perhaps this is the best example of the rule ingrained in me since
youth for you see in sports, there are rarely instances when no one wins or
loses. In sporting contests, there is always a winner and loser. Those who win,
move onto greater things like the playoffs with the ultimate goal to be the
last team standing, the overall champion of your sports league. You win to gain
and those who lose go home. There are no spoils for the losers.
Why have this discussion within a Christian devotion?
Because it sets the table for Jesus to teach us that once
again, things from a Christ-perspective often runs counter intuitive to the
ways of the world, and in the case of our scripture passage for today, the rule
that you have to win to gain. Look at His words again here from Matthew:
“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” Matthew 16:24-28
Jesus was defined by His selfless sacrifice. He had it all, more than anyone
else who has ever walked the earth. Power. Authority. Popularity, at least
among the people He helped. He had it all going for Himself. For after all, He
was the Son of God Himself. From a worldly perspective He was a winner, except
in the eyes of the Jewish religious establishment who wished Him dead.
And yet, Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be conquered by His foes. He
handed Himself over freely to His opponents and suffered terribly in their
hands, beaten and then forced to carry His own cross on His battered body to
the place where He was crucified and died. All His enemies looked at Him as a
loser and themselves as winners. But they had it backwards.
You see, Jesus has to lose to gain.
Go back to yesterday’s devotion and scripture passage. Jesus had told
His disciples of the deep suffering and hardship He would face, even confessing
He would be killed. But that wasn’t how the story would end. Rather, Jesus told
them that “on the third day” He would be “raised to
life”. Death was not the end for Him for He would gain a new life better than
the one He had, one that would have Him ascend to heaven having accomplished
what God sent Him to do to sit at His Father’s right hand, given authority over
everything in heaven and on earth.
Jesus had to lose to gain and we are
expected to follow His lead. He tells us so Himself:
“Whoever wants to
be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For
whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for
Me will find it. What good
will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what
can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
If you want to be in with Jesus, or in
other words, to be a Christian, then you have to set yourself aside, humble
yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Him. You have to be willing to lay
your own life down for Him as He did for you. You have to be committed to trade
in your desires for the desires of God, just as He did. For Jesus tells us that
we can only get to true and everlasting life He offers by trading in the temporary
worldly life we currently live.
In other words, we can only gain life by
first losing it.
And when we do, when we are willing to acquire
eternity for our souls by giving up any aspirations of cashing in on what the
world offers, then everything we do in life is for Jesus, for His purposes, and
for His glory. We find our treasures from heaven and not from earth (Matthew
6:19-21).
In the end translation, it’s a simple case of addition by subtraction.
For a reward awaits those who choose submission over rejection, sacrifice over
self centeredness, salvation over destruction, life over death. For Jesus
promises this to those who choose to lose their lives to find life in Him:
Jesus is coming back and when He does, everyone on earth is going to be
judged. Those who are in Him will enter into the glory of God and dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. Those who chose to gain the world and lose their
very souls will suffer in eternal damnation.
At judgment day, we will receive the outcome we deserve based on our
choice to either follow or reject Jesus. On that day, my prayer is that you
chose to lose your life to gain it by accepting His offer of salvation,
experiencing the truth first-hand that a loss can indeed become a gain.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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