THINK TOGETHER.
What is the meaning of life? Do you ever think about this question?
READ TOGETHER.
Matthew 16:24-26. 24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
Many people, especially adults, wonder what the meaning of life is. Why are we here on earth? What are we supposed to be doing? There are other people who don’t ever think about these hard questions. They just live their lives from day to day and never wonder why we are all alive in the first place.
Many people believe that the meaning of life is simply to be happy. To “find your bliss.” Even America’s Declaration of Independence says that God wants us to “pursue happiness.”
But Jesus told us that the real meaning of life is to pursue him – follow me.
Why do we need to follow Jesus? Because that is the only way to save our soul, our life. But did you notice the strange way Jesus said to follow him and save our lives? By taking up our cross. Yikes! That doesn’t sound like living, that sounds like dying.
Guess what? It’s both.
Think about Jesus for a minute. If he had never died on the cross he never would have been resurrected, right? And if he had never died for our sins and been resurrected to life again then we would never be able to be saved from our sins and receive his new life. We would never be able to save our lives by following him. That’s the meaning of life – we live by dying, we gain by losing.
Jesus could only share his life with us by dying. He could only gain you by first losing everything. When we follow Jesus we are following him into this same pattern – die so that others might live.
Now to be very clear, when Jesus asks us to follow him by taking up our cross he doesn’t mean literally. He doesn’t want us to carry a beam of wood around like Jesus did on the day he was crucified. He doesn’t ever want us to try to get hurt or hurt ourselves.
So what does he want us to do? He wants us to live our lives for others like he did. He wants us to be willing to share and give, even when it hurts. He wants us to love others even when it feels like dying. Why? Because that is how people will know that God is more important and better than anything else. Having God’s love and grace in us is better than everything else in the whole world.
That’s the meaning of life.
Because of Jesus we can have God in us – the best thing in the whole world.
With Jesus we can carry our cross like he did.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Play “follow the leader.” Make sure everyone knows to do exactly what the leader does. How is this like following Jesus? Jesus gave us his life; how can we give our lives for others?
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus, you died so that I can live. Help me to live for others too. Amen.
TLICfamily 