Thinking Differently

I have been meditating on and challenged by Pastor’s Lisa’s recent message to us regarding our definition of success and letting go of a worldly point of view. Sometimes it takes a few weeks for these revelations to “settle-in” on me, as I grapple with these truths and ask the Lord to make these truths my own personal encounter with revelation.

I was reading in Mark 10: 32-45 recently where Jesus again tells his disciples what kind of death he is about to endure. There is no indication in the scriptures as to whether the disciples understood what He was telling them, but James and John immediately afterwards start asking Jesus whether they can sit on His right and left hand in glory. They are not conversing about the death of their beloved master that he has just told them about. Jesus replies with this question and statement:

Mark 10: 38 “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

Mark 10: 39 “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with”

Jesus indicates to them that the original question they had been asking was the wrong one! They were all concerned with their own self (the “I”) and how their success was to be defined. Jesus redirects them to the Plan, the plan that was from the beginning, before time began. The Plan was that we would drink His cup and receive His baptism. The Plan was that we would be partakers of this death and resurrection. It is this that defines our success! Our success is defined by our engagement, consumption and absorption of, yes obsession with, the death and resurrection of Christ and our union with Him. This is such an “other-worldly” point of view and demands that we think differently about our daily lives.