What must you do today to live well? Before you answer that, consider this similar question: What must you do today to live? Your answer to this second question is the secret to the first question.

Notes And Next Steps

Mark 8:31-38  + Part 5 of the series “Heaven On Earth"

Is a dog essential for a president?

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Mark 8:31-33)

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

God designed us for himself.

“I am loved.”

“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?” (Mark 8:34-36)

If Jesus is your King, you can’t have an agenda.

If you seek the world before your soul, you will gain neither.
If you seek your soul before the world, you will gain both.

 

CROSSTALK

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. YOUR FAVORITE: What is your favorite phrase in this quote from C.S. Lewis?

                  “Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in” (Mere Christianity).

               2. YOUR PICK: Based on your selection, what one thing about it does God’s Word help you see more clearly? An “aha” for you.
                  A. He is human
                  B. He is divine
                  C. Both
                  D. Neither
               3. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: “If Jesus is your King, you can’t have an agenda.” How is it possible to have no agenda yet to plan or pray in bold faith?