Dethroning self

4 Mar 2021 • From Bishop Richard Jackson

Mark 8:34-35: Jesus said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the Gospel will save it.”

"People say that the heart of Jesus message is love, but here you see what he means by that.  Love is the total giving of oneself for the good of the other.  It's from this that all of the other moral teachings of Jesus flows.

Dying to myself, submitting all of my ambitions, priorities, preferences, relationships, and discernment of moral boundaries to Christ does feel like a sort of death.  We are hard-wired as human beings to self-protect and avoid that.

But this glorious paradox -- this dying to truly live, this true freedom through submission to Christ, is the heart of Jesus’ message.  It is incredibly hard and counter-intuitive, but as we enter into it we begin to get little glimpses along the way that he’s right.  Our Lenten journey is part of that dethroning of ourselves.  It's hard, but it’s the path to true and lasting joy both now and forever."

Follow this link to a full transcript of Bishop Richard's weekly video message.