Welcome to Timeless Truth with Pastor Jim Thomas. In season 2, Pastor Jim is leading us in a study of Mark. Today’s passage is Mark 8:31-38.
“George Buttrick, former chaplain at Harvard, recalls that students would come into his office, plop down on a chair and declare, I don’t believe in God.” Buttrick would give this disarming reply: “Sit down and tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.” And then he would talk about Jesus, the corrective to all our assumptions about God.”
– Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
Christian discipleship involves at least 3 things:
1. Denying your self
“Denying self is not the same as self-denial. We practice self-denial when, for a good purpose, we occasionally give up things or activities. But we deny self when we surrender ourselves to Christ and determine to obey His will.”
– Warren Wiersbe
2. Taking up your cross
“Do you want to know a truth that in the momentous challenges of our modern world will be at once a quest to inspire you, an anchor to hold you fast, a rich fare to nourish you, and a relationship you will prize above all others? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call.”
– Os Guinness, The Call
3. Following Jesus
“The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become…our real selves are all waiting for us in him…As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all.”
– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“Finding our true selves in Christ, we identify with him who loved us, follow his way of self-giving for God and for others, and thus continually find ourselves afresh in him. The Christian self both gives and finds itself in the love of Jesus Christ.”
– Richard Bauckham, Losing and Finding Self
