Matthew 16:24-25 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "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 will find it.

1. Instead of thinking about Jesus' mission and vision in terms of __________ __________, we must think about our calling in light of the ____________.

2. Anything that gets between Jesus and the cross is from the ____________ himself.

3. To be a disciple is not to have worldly success, but it is to be ____________ to the image of our Savior in His suffering, death, and resurrection!

Scripture Readings
Jeremiah 15:15-21
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Take It With You!

Here we will offer thoughts and meditations on the message to help us as we contemplate and discuss and wrestle with what we are hearing.

Because men do not know the cross and hate it, they necessarily love the opposite, namely, wisdom, glory, power, and so on. Therefore they become increasingly blinded and hardened by such love, for desire cannot be satisfied by the acquisition of those things that it desires. Just as the love of money grows in proportion to the increase of money itself, so the dropsy of the soul becomes thirstier the more it drinks, as the poet says: "The more water they drink, the more they thirst for it." The same thought is expressed in Ecclesiastes 1:8: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing." This holds true of all desires. Thus also the desire for knowledge is not satisfied by the acquisition of wisdom but is stimulated that much more. Likewise the desire for glory is not satisfied by the acquisition of glory, nor is the desire for praise satisfied by praise, and so on, as Christ shows in John 4:13, where he says, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again."

Martin Luther