Going to the Salad Bar

Text: He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  Mark 8:34

Move1:  A trip to the salad bar. 

Move2:  While you can avoid the onions if you so choose at the salad bar, there are some things as a believer and disciple of Christ you cannot avoid. 

Love Prosperity, love worship, love a little study, a little prayer

Avoid change, avoid self-denial, and avoid self-sacrifice.

Move3:  Our discipleship as followers and believers in Christ, will include the same elements that were a part of his life.  Denying themselves.  Have the same mind as the mind of Christ.  Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 

Move4:  Taking up their cross.  Emptying of oneself, pouring out of oneself.  Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  A life of servanthood. 

Move5:  True disciples look, act and behave like their masters.  If we are united with Christ in the Spirit, then we need to have the same mind as Christ did, denying ourselves, and becoming obedient servants.  Then and only then, will we be exalted with Christ, who was given the name over every other name, the name that every knee must bow to, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  Amen!