Mark 8:34-37 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. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?"
This "hard saying" of Jesus is one that the Church in America must hear! Given that two of the most cherished values of our culture are personal comfort and personal convenience, there is far too much self-centered, unsacrificial living being practiced by average church goer today. Jesus makes it very plain here that self-denial and NOT self-gratification is the path he calls us to walk.
Take a moment and reflect on the following insights into this desperately needed virtue of self-denial:
"If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, and he that does not live to God, is dead." (George MacDonald).
"Holiness is an unselfing of ourselves." (Frederick W. Faber)
"I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to Him." (Charles Spurgeon)
pj
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