Denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Jesus is not easy. True faith in Jesus Christ is costly. There is a heaviness to Jesus’ words in Mark 8:34, a reminder that the Christian life is not a sideshow, it’s not a weekend hobby. It’s an all embracing call to repentance and faith. That means following Jesus is certainly not something we can do by ourselves. We need the help of God’s Holy Spirit, we need the encouragement and fellowship of God’s church and the loving visits of elders.
We also need to hear the regular preaching of the gospel so that we can be reminded that the call to follow Jesus is not a burden, but a promise:
Mark 8:35: Those who trust in Jesus, those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
Mark 8:36–37: Jesus knows the truth about the value of our lives. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose
(Jim Elliot, a missionary who went to try and reach the Huaorani Indians of Ecuador, and was killed by them).
Mark 8:38: Jesus will come again to judge the world and if we follow him now, he will not be ashamed of us then.
31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.