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I want to welcome you back to our Look Through Mark chapter 8 in Daily Drive
Time Devotions Day 5. This week we've been talking about three wrong
perspectives and one right perspective. The three wrong perspectives are setting
my mind on my resources and not God, setting my mind on the material, not the
spiritual, setting my mind on the things of man and not the things of God.

And the one right perspective? You are the Christ. And the verses we're going to
look at today, they are filled with God's direction for living out that right
perspective on life.

How do you live the promised life that the Christ wants to give us, that Jesus
wants to give us? And then Jesus called the crowd to him along with his
disciples and said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose
it.

But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is
it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? For what can a man
give in exchange for his soul?

If anyone is ashamed of me, in my words, in this adulterous and sinful
generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's
glory with the holy angels. " These are powerful verses, verses 34 to 38.
They're all about how I live out this truth of Jesus being the Christ, the
promised one, the one that I follow in my life.

And these verses are really about Jesus' answers to the disciples' problems of
perspective. The problem of, "Am I going to look at my resources or God's
resources? " Jesus is saying here, "You let go of your resources.

You deny yourself. " Now, he's not saying here, "You hate yourself. You put
yourself down.

" He's saying, "You deny yourself. You realize the inadequacy of your own
resources. And then you pick up God's resource.

" And here he says that the major resource of God is a cross. They all thought
that a cross meant humiliation and death. In God's plan, a cross means
forgiveness, victory, and power.

You pick up God's resource, and then you follow me. That's why God supplies the
resources in our lives, so that we have the power to follow him in our daily
life. Is it going to be my resources or God's?

Is it going to be a focus on the material or the spiritual? Jesus says here,
"You can gain the whole world and lose your soul. You can get everything
materially and still be empty inside.

" And you can have everything in this life, but if you've missed it in the next
life, you've missed eternity. You can set your mind on the material, and you'll
lose the material and the spiritual. But if you set your mind on the spiritual,
Jesus says you're going to gain both, not only here, but also in all eternity,
in the ways that God wants, in the ways that you trust him.

This question of, "Is it going to be man's interests or God's interests? " Jesus
talks about that in verse 38. Setting our minds on man's interests makes us
ultimately ashamed of Christ.

We don't want to carry a cross through the crowd. We don't want people to laugh
at us. Jesus says, "Anybody ashamed of me, you're thinking just of man's
interests.

" And he talks about this adulterous and sinful generation. The word adulterous
there is not talking about marriage adultery. Jesus talks about that in other
places.

Here he's talking about the adultery of rejecting God's love, adulterous in my
relationship with God. I'm trying to love God and love money and love this world
all at the same time. Man's interests are God's interests.

The real choice here is who do I want to please? Am I going to make the easy
choice or the eternal choice? Now as you and I walk through these verses, the
key to me in what Jesus is saying here is back in verse 34.

So I'd like to go back and focus on it together for a few moments. Verse 34,
Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me. " How are you going to do that today?

Today how are you going to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow him?
Let's just think about it together for a few minutes. First you deny yourself.

What does that mean? That means you say no to yourself. You're never going to
grow in your commitment if you don't learn to say no to yourself.

Notice here, Jesus doesn't say deny Satan. He says deny yourself. Now Satan may
put the temptation into your life.

Your own selfish spirit may put the temptation into your life. Your pride may
put it there. It can come from all kinds of sources.

But at some point you have to say no to your own selfishness in order to grow
spiritually. Have you discovered that what you want is not always what God
wants? What you think is not always what God is thinking for you.

What you feel is not always what God is feeling in a situation. That's one of
the most shocking discoveries of life, that I'm not perfect and I'm certainly
not. Say no to yourself because you realize you can trust him more.

One of the reasons we find it difficult, so difficult to say no to the wrong
thing. To say no to selfishness. This is a key to growth in the Christian life.

One of the reasons it's so hard to say no is we haven't yet found the right
thing to say yes to. In order to say no to the things that are going to pull me
down spiritually, I have to learn to say yes to the right thing. So what do I
say yes to in my daily life in order to live out this life that Jesus has given
me to live?

Do I say yes to recognizing God loves me? Well that's part of it. Do I say yes
to recognizing I'm part of a church that supports and encourages me?

Yes, that's a part of it. But it goes a lot deeper than that. It's a lot more
serious than that.

What do I say yes to? Deny yourself, Jesus said, and then he said this, take up
your cross. You want to live out the life that Jesus has given you to live?

Here's the depth of it. Say yes to the cross. Yes to the cross?

What does that mean? Does that mean I need to die today somehow for Jesus? When
you and I see a cross, we picture death.

But the Bible also tells us, Jesus said in another place, I want you to take up
your cross daily. So he's not talking about dying here. He's not talking about
martyrdom.

What is he talking about? When you and I see a cross, we see suffering. We see
torture.

We see death. When Jesus talks about a cross, what does he see? Jesus sees yes.

Jesus sees choice. Jesus sees that he said yes to the Father. Even when in the
Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed the night before he died, let this cup pass for
me if at all possible, but nevertheless, let your will be done and not my will.

What does it mean to say yes to the cross? These three words, whatever it takes.
God, whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes for you to do what you want to do in my life, I say yes to
that. Because God, I know you're not out to ruin my life. I know you are out to
do your best in my life.

And with Jesus Christ, it meant going to a cross. Even that torture on the
cross, why would he do that? Because that yes to God meant the salvation, the
forgiveness of all mankind, whatever it takes.

Now the fear in that is if I say yes to God, whatever it takes is going to mean
something difficult in my life. Whatever it takes is going to mean something
hurtful in my life. Well, whether you say yes to God or not, you're going to
have difficult and hurtful things in your life.

The question is, are the difficulties I face, are the hurts I face, are they
going to be of my own making, or are they going to be because I'm following him?
Are they going to be selfish difficulties or sanctified difficulties? Are they
going to be selfish hurts or sanctified hurts?

I don't want to face hurts in this life. And one day I'm going to be in heaven,
you are too, where there's going to be no more hurts. God honors that feeling of
our hearts, but I'm going to face hurts in this life.

And so I say yes to whatever it takes. But just remember that whatever it takes,
that yes that you say to the cross, it doesn't always mean a pain, it doesn't
always mean a hurt. There's also glory in the cross, the glory of forgiveness.

People wear a cross around their neck today on a chain because it's a place of
forgiveness, a place of God's great glory being revealed. And you and I, when we
say yes to the cross, it might mean that God wants in my life, in your life
today, to bring glory to himself in some way I could never imagine. I see
choice, I see yes in the cross.

Take up your cross. Say yes to God today, even in the difficult places. How do I
follow him?

How does this become real in my daily life? Say no to myself, say yes to the
cross. And then Jesus says, then follow me.

I say now to the Lord. I say now I'm going to do it, Lord. Now like in follow
the leader, he goes left, you go left.

He stops, you stop, now. You look at your life right now. Your life might be
confusing right now.

You're not sure what to do next, you're not sure where to turn next. Turn to him
and work today on following him, even in the small steps. I found that when I'm
not sure of the broad direction of God in my life, if I'll follow him in the
small steps of life, he'll show me the broad direction.

I'm not sure where to turn next to find a job. If I'll serve the people that I
meet today, he'll use even those small steps to help me somehow to find the job.
I'm convinced that although growth is a lifetime process, an incredible
difference will come into your life today because you ask God to see in this new
way, to say no to myself, to say yes to the cross, to say now to the Lord.

But you can't do that on your own power. You can't do that on your own energy.
That comes through the faith in God's power in your life.

The power to be unselfish is poured into your life through Jesus Christ. The
power to take up a cross comes from him who took up a cross. The power to follow
him comes from recognizing he's out in front and I am following him.

Right now, today, don't try to do this on your own power. See that he wants to
pour his power into your life. How does he do that?

One of the ways is through talking to him, through simple prayer, trusting him
through prayer. So let's do that together right now. And in a serious moment of
prayer, I invite you to pray these words of commitment back to Jesus Christ.

Jesus, I want to be committed to you, but I admit that I don't know how. I often
stumble and I can't seem to take the desire that I have to grow and make it a
part of my everyday life as much as I want. And so Jesus, I ask you to take the
blindfolds off.

Give me a new, give me a fresh vision of what you want me to be. Help me to see
you in a new way, out in front, leading the way. Jesus, I want to follow you
today.

I wanted to die myself, take up the cross and follow you. I ask for your
strength, your power to do this and I ask for it in your name, Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Join us next week. We're going to be looking together at Mark chapter 9.