³⁴ Jesus called the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and ^[a]take up his cross [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me]. ³⁵ For whoever wishes to save his life [in this world] will [eventually] lose it [through death], but whoever loses his life [in this world] for My sake and the gospel’s will save it [from the consequences of sin and separation from God]. Mark 8:34-35

This is the exact opposite of what’s popular in our culture for the way of thinking. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries is the cry that is crashing relationship after relationship. Jesus didn’t subscribe to this way of thinking whatsoever.

“Let them” is a great ahaaa that a super, now-famous influencer has had and it is a great revelation. But, much of the other rhetoric that surrounds that thought is self,self, self-focused. I can hear you thinking…lol…(as my mom used to say) Seriously, if you are thinking, yes, but Adrienne, you even wrote a chapter in Love ANYWAY called Love yourself. I did. Jesus said for us to love others as we love ourselves. And that was a big ahaa I had that we will love others to the degree we learn to love ourselves. But don’t miss the whole point here…it’s loving others. And so in order to be able to love others well, we need to also love ourselves well…again, SO THAT we will love OTHERS well. Not INSTEAD OF because “they can just talk to the hand”. Noooo, entire passage taken out of context if that’s the attitude.

Part of “losing your life” for the gospel’s sake in Mark 8 above is for love’s sake. Can people look at your relationships and see Christ? Do your relationships exemplify forgiveness, patience, peace, joy? The gospel is the good news about God who is love and ….John 3:16…

My husband used to say this along these lines…he would ask the teens in our youth group as they would be complaining about it being hot or her hurting my feelings or him breaking my heart or…all the things the teens would come to our house at 11pm more often than I can now believe we allowed because they neeeeeeded to talk about how they blew it again and (fill in the blank). If any of you are reading this, I don’t regret a single midnight visit. We would go back and do it all over the same for sure. Love and miss ya’ll and are so proud of you guys.

Kevin would ask them, “What would a dead man do?” He would challenge them to die to self if they wanted to really live and get out of the cycles they would find themselves in. Many of them did break those cycles and go on to be missionaries, pastors, work with amazing ministries like Dave Ramsey, raise beuatiful families and are thriving in church today.

So I ask you today about whoever is on your last nerve or whatever you aren’t sure you can handle any more, “What would a dead man do?” Do that. Well, a dead man would do nothing because he’s dead. So let’s die to our flesh and live in the spirit and watch God supernaturally straighten out those we just can’t as hard as we try. Romans 8 is a how-to.

Happy Monday!

XO,

A