11 August, 2022
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. – Mark 8:35
God our Father, we magnify the absolute Goodness, Holiness and Magnificence of our Living, Omniscient God, in praise and worship. Your Glory stands forever. Your Holy Word, which had been taught, prophesied and later, propagated by Jesus our Savior, thereby teaching us that a suffering for the sake of the truth of the gospel message is, by Christ, accounted a suffering for Christ’s sake, is the belief, crucial of our Christian faith and the crux of our hope of salvation.
Our life here on earth is temporal, and must be valued in that light alone, but the soul lives on and eternal salvation is promised to the soul which is ready to let go of the body, for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. This means that, as the Body of Christ, we cannot deny that Christ is our Head and abandon him and the gospel, out of fear of losing our temporal life, for we shall then be risking the loss of eternal life for our souls.
Lord, strengthen us to be willing to lose our life, or run the hazard of losing it, for Christ’s sake, for proclaiming and professing our Christian unity in Christ and in our faith in the dogma of the gospel. By observing and cultivating, preaching and spreading the Word of God, fearlessly and boldly, we can be assured of Jesus’ delivering us out of our persecutors’ hands, to be recompensed with eternal life, which is beyond measure, in Jesus’ Name. Amen