A Bad Trade For Your Soul

Today I'm addressing the world with this important message. I hope it reaches everyone who needs it.

Jesus asked a math question that most people are failing without realizing it. He didn't ask it of religious people. He asked it to people chasing everything in the world that it told them to chase. I'm referring to Mark 8:36. "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? "People become uncomfortable with this subject. I think it's NOT ONLY important but relevant. Especially in todays self-centered society where there's a systemic prioritizing of profit over people and the environment.

I "used to" read Mark 8:36 and think it was about money. But now? I think it's about something far more expensive than $$$$ because Jesus isn't talking about your bank account in his verse. He's talking about your soul. He's asking you, even today, to do the math. "What does it profit a man to gain he while world and lose his own soul?" Jesus already knew something that we're still learning.

You could win every external competition and still not possess the only thing that actually mattered. You could have the title, the income, the followers, the influence, the respect, the lifestyle and still walk away from this life bankrupt. One of those things transfer. None of them cross over. None of them boost the economy of heaven Jesus operates in. He refers to a trade. He tells His disciples what it actually cost to follow Him .."Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me." He knew what was pulling at them. The same thing is pulling at us two millennia later: a life that looks full but leaves you empty on the inside.

The world has gotten very sophisticated at packaging emptiness. It doesn't come looking like destruction anymore. It comes looking like success.  It comes looking like hustle.  It comes looking like achievement. It comes with all the applause and affirmation, and every external signal telling you that you're winning. Somewhere in the middle of all that, a man can lose himself slowly, quietly, without anyone around him even noticing. And that's the trade Jesus warned about. The slow trade. The one that doesn't happen all at once. The one that happens decision by decision. Compromise by compromise. Priority by priority. Until one day you look up and you realize you gained everything you were chasing and somewhere along the way, you lost "you." Your faith was traded for the things of the world .. the fleeting, the temporary the empty.

The most dangerous version of this isn't the person who dramatically chose the world over God. It's the person who just stayed busy, who kept moving, who kept building, who never stopped long enough to ask, is the thing I'm building toward actually worth what I'm paying for? Jesus is asking that question right now. Not to shame you, not to make you feel behind. He's asking because He knows what your soul is worth. And He's the only one in the room who paid the full price to prove it. Are you trading an eternal relationship with Christ, an eternity of boundless peace, reward, and happiness only to bankrupt your soul?

My final thoughts: the whole world is a bad trade for your soul. Think about it. Your soul .. the version of you that existed before life started adding things and taking things. The version of you God formed before the foundation of the world. That version of you is worth more than every achievement, temporary pleasure habit or desire. There is a cost. One is temporal, the other divine. One takes your life, the other gives you LIFE.

Until He comes,

-Pat-