Near the Cross

Jesus said: "If you want to follow Me, you must deny yourself the things you think you want. You must pick up your cross and follow Me. The person who wants to save his life must lose it, and he who loses his life for Me will find it.
Look, does it make sense to truly become successful, but then to hand over your very soul?" ~ Matthew 16:24-26
"To put it another way: if we have been united with Him to share in a death like His, don’t you understand that we will also share in His resurrection?
We know this: whatever we used to be with our old sinful ways has been nailed to His cross. So our entire record of sin has been canceled, and we no longer have to bow down to sin’s power. A dead man, you see, cannot be bound by sin. But if we have died with the Anointed One, we believe that we shall also live together with Him." ~ Romans 6:5-8