Mark 8

Jesus is teaching His disciples, "...that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He was stating the matter plainly." v.31-32

The disciples, especially Peter, did not want to believe that the Messiah was going to die. But they, like the world today didn't hear the whole message...He would rise again after three days. Jesus always includes the two together: the death and resurrection. The gospel message means nothing without the two being together. The resurrection is just as important if not more than the death on the cross. It is in His resurrection that He appears to Paul, the apostle that wrote most the New Testament. To not believe in the resurrection, is not to be a Christian because it is the completion of the whole story as prophesied in the Old Testament.

These next words are very well known, but takes faith in Jesus Christ to pull off:
"If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? v. 34-36

These things are not natural for us. We naturally want the world and want attention on us. We are selfish. What Jesus is asking here is impossible without a personal relationship with Him. We cannot will ourselves to deny ourselves and our love of the world. It takes a supernatural strength only given by spending time with Him in prayer and in His word.