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?.."
Mark 8:34-38
When Jesus calls people to himself to become his disciple-follower, it is always a call to total abandonment. It it a call to surrender. It is a call to give up rights, hopes, dreams and even preference. It is a call to subject a person's intellect, emotion and will to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Living for the Him is His call to us. He calls us to surrender our lives to his eternal purposes. And He has but one reason why He can call people to live lives of radical submission to Him. It is because, there we find life. It is there we find the life-giving passion that breathes out life in us--we find our soul.
In this life we are always in the pursuit of this kind of life. We are looking of our 'souls'. We just don't want to exist and to live. We all want to have significance and fulfilment. We want to have life itself.
Jesus offers just that. Life is found in Him! Significance is found Him! Fulfilment is found Him. It is only when we radically abandon ourselves for Him and for the sake of the gospel to we find meaning in this life and even in eternity.
A person may pursue the world and gain it to find meaning in this life, but still an emptiness will envelope his heart. This finite world cannot fill the infinite space in our heart. It can only be filled by the infinite messiah who has offered himself to us.
Live for Him! It is the only way to have life!
