Thank you, pastor david. All right, friends. Well, as you know, we're in the Gospel of Mark, and I understand that feels like it's been quite a journey here in the Gospel of Mark. Well, we're coming to something of, I guess you could say the midpoint or an end point, kind of our end of part one, if you will. So we've been kind of going through the Gospel of Mark, and up to this point, we've been talking about how Mark kind of starts his gospel and says, this is the gospel about the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And then we get all of these stories and all these people wondering who he is. And ultimately it's kind of led to this point and just to kind of give. Give the next step away. Starting next week, we're going to do kind of a short little series that's going to be in the middle of the Gospel of Mark, which is. Is kind of the journey to Jerusalem. And then we're going to take a break. We're going to do an Advent series that's going to be about the carols of Christmas, but not. Not really about the carols. And being a little tricky, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about God and who God is and how we see that in the lyrics of these carols. And. And then we're going to kind of. We're going to come back and close Mark after the end of after, you know, we get. We get through Advent. We're excited to continue on in this study. And I've enjoyed kind of the opportunity to deeply go into the Gospel of Mark and really, I think, understand it in a way that for me, has been new in some ways, where I'm coming across things I hadn't thought about before or hadn't heard before. But this is actually a verse that's pretty familiar. And at this. In this verse, we're gonna. We're gonna see this conversation between Jesus and the disciples. And it's an important conversation. I think, as Pastor David said, ultimately it is the question, right? And it starts in Mark 8, chapter Mark 8, verse 27, Mark 8, verse 27. The NIV will be on the screen behind me, and that's what I'm reading from. But you can. You could follow along whatever translation you have in front of you. But 8, 27. Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On his way, he asked him, who do people say that I am? Now we read the phrase Caesarea Philippi, and that doesn't mean Kind of anything to us, right? We're like, okay, cool. Somewhere where Jesus lived, I'm sure, right? But the meaning of this, as David kind of alluded to in the, in the, in the worship set, was that at this time, time, this was a place where there was a temple to the Roman emperor. So there was a belief kind of in ancient Rome that the, the, the leaders of the state weren't just people who were holding positions of state power, that they were actually like semi gods or demigods, right? And that they were actually worthy of worship. Which is what we all think about politicians, right? We all, we all agree that we should come together. I'm just joking, you know, but, but you know, this was kind of the idea, right? So the reason why this location is mentioned is because Jesus is asking, who do people say that I am? And he's doing it kind of in the shadow of this monument to state power, right, like that, that the power at that time was the Roman Empire. They were, they were the most powerful kind of entity anyone could imagine. And, and right in the shadow of that, he, he asked, who do people say that I am? And the disciples are going to answer him. They replied. Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others one of the prophets. Now we know based on kind of everything we've seen that these answers fall short of who Jesus actually is. And that's where he's leading. He says in verse 28, or, sorry, verse 29. But what about you disciples? What about you? Who do you say that I am? This is the question that we've kind of been building to all throughout, right. I mentioned this at the beginning, right, in verse one. I'm sorry, right. In chapter one, it says, this is the Messiah, the son of God. And then, you know, we kind of dance around that revelation over and over again as we go. If you remember back when Jesus was driving out demons, the demons would say, we know who you are, Holy One of God. And it says that Jesus didn't allow them to speak because they knew who he is, right? So that's the first place that we dance around it and then we see Jesus calm a storm, right? Which was something that only a God could do, right? If we looked at that back when we did that, back when we did that verse, that when Jesus calmed the storm, they would have understood that this was the actual of God or, you know, a deity, right? And the disciples look at them and they say, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him, right? So they still don't Know, but they're wondering. And then we go to Jesus hometown and they kind of ask the same question. But they ask it, you know, derisively. They ask it sarcastically. They say, who does this guy think he is? Isn't he a carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son? Didn't this guy grow up among us? Right? And then ultimately it leads to this question. Who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am? And Peter is going to answer him. He says, you are the Messiah. And then the next verse says, and Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him, right? So finally on the lips of the disciples, we have this understanding of who they're dealing with. We have this understanding that this is the Messiah, this is the chosen one of God. And I believe we're going to circle back to this. But. But what Peter said would have been this idea that this is the chosen one. This is the one who's gonna kind of lead us out. This is the one who's going to kind of turn around everything. And that's what makes this next verse really interesting, because the disciples have finally come to this point. And I think, as we're gonna say in a minute, Peter would have expected, okay, now we're gonna start talking about how we're gonna, you know, renovate this thing. Now we're going to start talking about all the things we're going to start doing. And we're going to. We're going to take it to the Pharisees, and we're going to take it to Rome, and we're going to. We're going to do all that. But look what Jesus says next. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man, that is him, must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed. And after three days, rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter understood him. And Peter took him aside. I added the end. Peter understood him. That's not there, just to be clear. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebukes Peter, get behind me, Satan. You do not have the concerns of God, but merely he. Human concerns. This is a roller coaster ride for Peter. He had just nailed it. He had just said, you're the Christ. And he said, you're right, Peter. Don't tell anybody. And then, you know, a couple sentences later, he's saying, jesus, I don't think that's the way it's supposed to go. And Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. It's been a, it's been a tough couple of minutes for our guy Peter. You know, I mean, and we've all been there, right? Where you do something right and immediately do something wrong, right? So that's what Peter is going through. He nailed it in a certain sense, but. But now he's missing it. This idea of Christ would have carried other ideas with it for Peter. One of the commentators puts it this way. The expositors Bible commentary says about the word Christ that Peter would have thought of victory when he thought about Christ. It says the word carries with it the idea of chosenness by God, consecration to his service, enduement. That's a fun word, enduement. With his power to accomplish the task assigned. The ideas that clustered around the title Messiah tended to be political and national in nature. So when Peter looks at Jesus and when he answers the question, you are the Christ or you are the Messiah, he had victory in mind, right? He had this idea of this is the guy who's going to win. This is the guy who's going to turn things around for us. This, you know, we're down on our luck, we're beat down by Rome, right. They would look back and they would read in the scripture about, about the Kingdom of David and about how they were this. They were this powerful kingdom where no one could stand up to them. And he thought that when he, as he comes to the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, he thought this is the guy that's going to lead us back to this. Right? So, so when he says you are the Messiah, he's thinking somebody who always wins and is always going to give us back the throne. And to kind of review, I know we went kind of fast through that first part, but just to make sure, kind of you're still with me. That's what we've been building to around this, right. Is like there's another maybe version of how Peter's idea of how the gospel would go would be that maybe we would dance around this and that when we finally came to the point where Jesus was declared the Messiah, then that would be like. I don't know how to describe it. If you read a lot of books or if you. There. There's always kind of when you first meet your hero, he's kind of hapless and he doesn't really want to get involved. And then when he finally, I mean, most, most of us have seen Star wars, right? You know what I mean? Right. Like so. So, right. Like, when we first meet Luke, right, He's just kind of like a farmer on, like, a desert. I'm pulling this totally from not having looked back, so if I get something wrong, I'm sorry. But, you know, he's kind of a farmer on a. On a desert town. And. And then, like, his. His house gets blown up, and then. And then he starts kind of getting after it. And there's that first moment in the movie where it's like, oh, that's the hero. That. That's him. Right. Like, and that's not just, you know, Star Wars. It's like, pretty much every book goes this way. You're kind of watching the main character, and you're going, what's this guy doing? Is he going to get around to it? Is he going to, you know, is he going to do something? And then finally he gets it and he kind of grabs onto it, and then, you know, he starts. If it's an action movie, he starts killing people, Right? If it's, you know, whatever. You know, whatever it is, like. Right. He starts doing the thing that you thought that he was going to do. And that is Peter's idea of how the gospel would go. That. That once we figure out who this guy is, he's gonna start, you know, cracking skulls, for lack of a better term. Right? He's gonna start showing up and, you know, and knocking down the people that had knocked them down. And he was gonna start overturning governments, and he was gonna bring back this idea of what Israel was supposed to be. And so Peter's idea of how the gospel would go would be that, you know, we would see all the same things leading up to this point, Right. The demonstration. Call him the Holy One of God, but he doesn't let them speak because they know who he is. And then they see him calm the storm, and they're saying, who is this? And then he goes back home and they're saying, you know, who does this guy think he is? And then finally, Jesus, you know, Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah, and they start kind of overturning everything. And then Peter, after getting to that point, hears him say, all right, here's what's going to happen. We're going to go to Jerusalem. Peter's like, you. Yeah, we're going to confront the chief priests and the teachers of the law. Yeah. Then I'm going to die. What? What do you mean you're going to die? Who's going to do it? Like, you know, it's just like. Is that the Guy we should be looking for, right? And Peter goes, jesus, that's not how it's going to go. And then Jesus says, get behind me, Satan, because you don't have in mind the things of God, but the things of man. And he says, peter, or sorry, Peter says, jesus, I thought this was going to be where we would win. And Jesus response is kind of, well, Peter, I'm going to overthrow every power that you can imagine, but not in the way you would expect, right? Peter's confession revealed insight into what Christ. Who Christ was and what he was there to do. But his concept of who Jesus was wasn't. He didn't actually understand. He understood who he was, but he didn't understand what that meant. It didn't match with the reality of who Jesus was, that. That again, if we look at it here, 2000 years ago, Jesus would topple the power of the Roman Empire. Jesus would create, you know, Jesus would create a powerful entity that would change the world in every way that we could possibly imagine. All of the things that were in Peter's mind were true in a sense, but it was going to be different than anything anyone had ever thought of leading up to that moment. And that's why a few years later, as the Apostle Paul writes, he talks about how he. He embarrassed, you know, the powers and the principalities, put the. Putting them on a public display and bringing them to shame, right? Nobody thought that how you would do that would be with a cross, right? Nobody thought that how you would do that would be being executed in public. But the reality is that through that, that Jesus actually disarmed those powers, that he created something spiritual, not physical, but that he. He did something that changed the world in a significant way, that he was the Messiah, but it wasn't going to look the way that Peter thought. And then, you know, and so Peter kind of gets it right but misses the point. And then in verse 34, Jesus continues, then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, whoever wants to be my disciple but must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels and Turning over to verse one, he says, truly, I tell you, some are standing here, will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God has come with power. Now, I will be honest with you. You could read, I read four or five commentaries, and all four or five of them have kind of a different take on what nine, verse one means, right? So let's just take a commercial just because I want to kind of explain what we're looking at there. There's, there's people who say not take the taste death means well, they'll go to eternal life, and that means they won't taste death. There's some people who say they won't taste death because what that meant was what happened at the resurrection, where the powers were kind of disarmed and, and, and Jesus entered into kind of a new eternal reign as Christ. And there's a bunch of other kind of ideas there. And, and honestly, I'm not going to sit here and say this is absolutely what it says. I think the strongest argument is probably, you know, the death and the resurrection kind of brought Jesus. Brought Jesus. I thought that was going down. Brought Jesus into his eternal reign, right? That tends to be my reading of it. But I just want to tell you there's a lot of things kind of happening there. But Jesus's main point here is I want you to see where this is going and where it is going is to the cross. Where it is going is to my death. And, and he's just had this conversation with Peter where he says, no, Peter, it's not going to be this, this victory parade, that, that I will actually sacrifice myself. And like I said, ultimately all the stuff that Peter thought would happen did happen, right? We're sitting here in a church in America 2,000 years later, right? Like, like all of those things would have been, you know, unthinkable, right? That 2000 years later people would still be worshiping Jesus, that 2000 years later the Roman Empire would be fallen and would be, you know, more or less a memory and yet Jesus would still be important and significant, right? So it did happen. The kingdom of God came in, but it didn't happen in the way Peter thought it would. And then Jesus turns to the crowd and says, I want to make sure you all know where this is going, because where it is going is to the cross. Following me won't lead to a throne in the way you're thinking about it leading to a throne. It will lead to your death, right? Because this idea of pick up your cross, nobody would have seen that. As you know, sometimes we say, oh, it's my cross to bear, yet nobody would have thought of it the way that we say that phrase, right? It. Somebody who picked up a cross was somebody who is headed to a place where they were going to die, right? Somebody who picked up a cross was a person who was marked for shame and ultimately death. And so Jesus says, following me is like picking up a cross. He is being very clear with the crowd that the decision to follow me is a decision to walk to your own death. But a death for me is better than life for you, right? So I know that can kind of be confusing what he's saying, and Jesus kind of says it in a. In a rambly way in this text. But basically what Jesus is saying is if you live your life for yourself, you will ultimately lose your life, right? This is not news to any of us, right? Like, if we live our lives to ourselves, we will eventually die and that will be it, right? And that is true both eternally and practically, right? If we live our lives for ourselves, we will ultimately, on the other end, this is the teaching of Scripture, that we will see Jesus face to face. He will say, depart from me, I never knew you. And that that will lead to eternal death because we have lived our lives for ourselves, right? That's. That's true. And of course, obviously, practically, most people have died, right? Like, you know, we talk about the grand scope of history. Almost everybody has died. It is a. It is, I guess if you count the people who got called up to heaven, those people didn't die, but most people have died, right? And so Jesus is saying, if you live your life for yourself, you will lose your life both eternally and practically. However, if you live your life for the sake for me and for the gospel, you will still lose your life, but you will ultimately get it back, back and so much more, right? Eternally. Right? We believe that when we live our life for Jesus, that when we see Jesus face to face, he will say, well done, good and faithful servant, Enter into your master's happiness that we will spend eternity in heaven. Right? This is an essential teaching of Scripture. It is the whole teaching of scripture that the whole reason why it's worth, you know, going through everything that we go through, the whole reason that we can have a hope in an eternal life is because that this short 60, 70, 80, 90 years that we spend on this earth, right? That ultimately that this. We will look back on this time and we will see it as a light and momentary pain that we will look back on it. And we will say, yeah, that's like the first day of my eternity. But everything has been fantastic since because I have spent thousands and thousands and thousands of years with my Savior in eternal life, life. And that when we give up our life for the sake of Jesus, that that is promised to us. But I believe that Christianity also has value. Practically. I say this all the time to people that even if I now don't, don't clip this, it goes in context of everything else I'm saying. So, you know, calm down and make sure you hear what I'm saying. Even if I get to the end of my life and there is nothing there, first of all, I wouldn't know because there'd be nothing there. And secondly, I'm very proud of the life I have lived for Jesus. Following Jesus has made me a better husband, it has made me a better father, it has made me a better man, it has made me a better person in every sense of the word, because I get to live my life for the purposes of Jesus. Now, again, I'm not saying I believe that. I'm saying it's very helpful to say to somebody who's like, well, what's the point of following Jesus? And I'm like, it's pretty good. I don't think I'm missing anything. And I get to live my life for the purpose of what I believe is an eternal father, an eternal God, an eternal creator who has made me on purpose and for a purpose, and that I get to live within that purpose. So this idea of, oh, you're giving up your life for Jesus? I don't think I'm losing anything thing. I think I'm giving my life to. To a Savior who gives back to me purpose and joy and peace and, and, you know, strength for today, a bright hope for tomorrow, right? All of those things that we sing together. Now that the Bible is clear, if there is no eternal life, we are above all men to be most pitied. I think it matters that there is an eternal life, and I think there is an eternal life. I believe it daily down to my very, very core. But the point is, is that when I think of all the ways that I could spend this life, spending it for Jesus is a better choice. Friends, ultimately my life is not something that people are going to remember, right? Like, and that's true for all of us, right? Like, even. It's like if I pick some random historical figure, right? If I say, I don't know, Thomas Edison, it's like, tell me 10 things about him, I think I can give you four. I can't tell you any. I mean, he invented, you know, I don't know. I'm not gonna put myself on the spot. I'm being recorded. But the point is, is like even in the best case of our human lives, the best case is our name ends up being on a rest stop in New Jersey. We did it right? Like, you know what I mean? And it's like, I mean that is one way to spend your life. But isn't it better to invest myself in eternity? Isn't it better to follow Jesus and participate in his mission in the world and in the lives of people around me? Because friends at, you know, there's at some someday I will have a funeral and people will, I hope, say some nice things about me. But in the end of the day, what's going to matter is how I live for Jesus and how I treated the people that are closest to me as I reflected who Jesus was as a father, a husband, a man, a pastor, etc. Right? Like those are ultimately going to be the things that matter. But we spent, we're tempted by our world to spend ourselves on things that ultimately don't matter. And, and that's the point that Jesus is making here. He's saying if you live your life for yourself, you will still lose your life. You will lose it eternally and you will lose it practically because even in the best case, you will ultimately be forgotten. However, if you live your life for me and for the gospel, you will still lose your life, but you will get it back and so much more because you will spend eternity with your Savior and you will get to participate in the mission of, of God in the world. And you will get to spend your life for the good of the people around you and for the good of the world that we have been told to rule over and subdue and kind of Jesus overarching point is that nothing is worth trading your soul for. Nothing is worth trading your soul for. And so what do we do with this today? Kind of. Kind of practically. And I think the answer is, is in how we answer a couple of questions. These questions are in your bulletin, so you know, you do have them written down. But the first question is who do we say that Jesus is? Who do we say that Jesus is? Right. It's kind of the question we've been building to. It's the main question of the verse. And I know most of us are actively following Jesus and he would say he is my Lord and my Savior. He is the person in whom I serve, he is. He is God. And I have said yes to him before. He has asked the question. But it helps to ask, is that true in every area of my life? Who do I say that Jesus is in every area of my life? Because, friends, the natural slip for us as believers is to say, well, yeah, he has some good ideas, but I don't know about. I mean, every area. I mean, he has some good ideas, but I don't know if it's. I don't know if it's everything right. But the truth is, is that Jesus hasn't left the option open for us to follow him casually right now. I said last week, it's okay to kind of be in process. It's okay to, you know, say yes to Jesus and be on the way. And that is still true. You can follow Jesus kind of bit by bit. But. But I want to be clear. You are working yourself towards a place where you will ultimately say that he is the Lord and, and Savior of his life, of your life, because his teaching doesn't leave open the opportunity for you to follow him casually or say, well, Jesus, you're right about some things, but not right about other things. I love the way C.S. lewis says in his book Mere Christianity. He says, I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him, that is Jesus. I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who claims he is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us and he didn't intend to. So today is Jesus the Lord of. Of your life, of every part. Of every part of your life? Or is he just window dressing because his teaching doesn't leave open the opportunity for him to be window dressing? And we have to make the decision to say, Jesus, you are the Lord of every part, of every part. And I will not keep you at arm's length. I will say yes to you before I know what you have asked me. And I will follow you with every part of every part of the my life. So the first question, who do I say Jesus is? Second question, what happens when my expectation doesn't match the reality? See, this was Peter's problem. For him, it was impossible that a messiah could suffer, right? And we go through this when our faith meets the road, right? When our vision of faith meets the reality of our lives. And the worst part of this is that God, I didn't sign up for this doesn't belong to any particular part of your faith journey, right? God, I didn't sign up for this isn't like, well, if we just figure it out with teenagers, they'll be good for the rest of their lives because they'll never go through something that'll make them wonder if God cares about them. That'll make them wonder if God sees them. That'll make them wonder if he is there for them. You see, this is a question we ask ourselves over and over again, right? And I think we can be honest here, right? We're a church family, right? We go through things and we go, God, this man. I thought I was doing all the right stuff. I thought I was living for you. I made sacrifices. I lived for you. And this is what I get. This is the life that gets. Gets to be my story. And this is where Peter is in this verse, and it's where we can kind of relate to him, is he goes, jesus, death. This is going to lead to death. No, I didn't sign up for that. And friends following Jesus will have those moments. And it's my job as your pastor to tell you that's normal. That's a normal thing to struggle with. It's normal to say, jesus, I thought that you healed people. I thought that you cared for my needs. I thought that you saw me. I thought that you heard my prayers. And it's okay for us to wrestle with that. It's okay for us to have those moments where we get upset. It's okay for us to go through that. But the message of this is that Peter ultimately didn't see the perspective that God had. And listen, I know I am not generally somebody who says, well, do you understand the great cosmic purpose for which you have gone through things? And listen, I don't think the answer to that is always yes, I think I will at some point. I think that when I meet Jesus face to face, I assume that I will understand because Scripture tells me I will know fully, even as I am fully known, right? So I will understand what, you know, what Jesus has for me ultimately when I see that. And there's a couple ways you can get there. I forget his name. Tim Keller, in his book Reason for God, kind of wrestles with this and he says that, you know, if I can look back at any suffering in my life and I can see how that suffering ultimately ended up for my good, then I can therefore assume that based on that and also that Jesus says that he brings about all things for the good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, and that therefore that will be true of all the suffering that I go through in life. Right? And we can make that faith statement and we can still be in a place where we go, okay, But I can't even imagine an explanation that I would say, okay, yeah, I get it. Right? And it's okay. That's us running into our finite nature as human beings, that there are things we do not yet understand. There are things we will not understand on this side of heaven. A couple weeks ago, a child, I think an 11 or 12 year old boy, we had the funeral at Grace Community Church. He passed away. He was out playing soccer. I don't know, what do you do with that? Right? Like, yeah, why? Right. One of the pastors at Grace Community Church, Kevin Kummer, is going through colon cancer and he's getting aggressive chemo. And you know, and obviously the hope is that, the hope is that it works. But when I hear about that, I'm like, I mean, God, did you know he was like a pastor? Did you know he was like trying out here? Right. And those are normal struggles and questions for us to ask. That is part of our faith journey. But when expectation doesn't match reality, our choices are, will I pick up my cross and follow Jesus or will I walk away? And that, friends, is the value of community, right? That is the value of talking to people around you. Right? That is the value of people knowing you and caring for you. And I know I'm going a little long, hang with me. But. But that is, that is the point of kind of why we have each other. That is the point of why we pray for one another. Because when we go through those difficult times, we have to make the choice to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. And no one who heard Jesus say that would have thought, ah, well, you know, pick up your cross. It's just a tough day or whatever. They would have understood that what they were embracing was trading their life for a life of following him. And sometimes that decision is hard. And when it is, we have to understand kind of this last point, that ultimately we have a choice of how we spend our lives. That ultimately we are answering the question, who owns our life? And that when our expectation of God doesn't match the reality of God, the next question is what Jesus said next, which is, if you grasp onto your life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake, you will gain it. And ultimately the question is, do I have my hope firmly anchored in an eternity where I will see Jesus face to face? Do I have my hope ultimately anchored in an eternity where there is no longer any sickness, where there is no longer any death, where every tear will be wiped away? Which is a really interesting verse if you think about it, because I think in my version of heaven, why am I crying? Right? Like, why is Jesus wiping away my tears? Which is an interesting kind of thing to wrestle with. I don't have a great answer for it, but, you know, that is ultimately where our hope is anchored, is in an eternal hope where we will be with our Savior forever and where there will be no more sickness, no more death, no more crying and no more pain. And that is what we look forward to, and that is where we anchor our hope. But every day we have to answer the question of, is that true about me today? Have I given up my life for the sake of this Savior? Have I given up my life for the sake of this Gospel? Have I chosen to follow Jesus today and every day going forward? Because it is the only deal we are offered where we get life and eternal life and a life of purpose. Because the alternative is that we hold on to our life, still lose it, separate ourselves from God, and live a life only for us. So, friends, who do you say Jesus is? And what happens when your expectations don't match reality? And when they don't, do you make the decision to pick up your cross again and. And continue to follow him? Because what we know. I know I've talked a lot about what we wrestle with, what we don't know. What we know is that our eternal hope is secure and that every day that we go through here will be a shadow, a moment, a pain. Scripture uses the phrase a light and momentary pain in light of the eternity that we spend with Jesus. And that is the hope that guides us through. Because Jesus is our Savior. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ, but he is not overturning a government. He is not having a great election, right. He is leading us into a kingdom that is his, that he has prepared for us. And that is the hope that we decide to live in every single day. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for this truth. We thank you that you are the Christ, that you are the chosen one, that you have established your kingdom and you have invited us into it. But the path into it is not through coronations or not through military might, or not through force. But, Lord, the path into it is to take up our cross and follow you. And, Lord, I pray that today me and each one of my friends would take up our cross again, would look at our lives and say, jesus, are you Lord of every part of every part of my life? And then when we reach those moments where the rubber meets the road where. Where. Where it's bumpier than we thought it would be, Lord, I pray that you would help us to decide again to pick up our cross and follow you. Because only in you do we have hope. And it is quite a hope that we have. And we just ask that you would remind us of this, remind us of the shrewdness of our hope. That, Lord, we are secure in you and, Lord, that everything will be made right. That, Lord, we will live alongside you and we will know your joy and your peace. And, Lord, that that is promised to each one of us who follows you today. And we ask that you would remind us of this again today and every day. We ask this in your name. Amen.