The following resource is from desiring God.org.

Let's pray.

Father, it's manifest from this passage of scripture that a prior exultation of yourself as supremely valuable is necessary in order for Jesus

answer to the question to make sense.

And therefore I pray that what we have been doing together here

and what is happening right now

the holy spirit would use

to deepen

and enlarge

and raise and strengthen.

A great majestic vision of yourself

as more valuable than life and more valuable than health.

I ask this in Jesus' name,

Amen. One of the reasons I love the Bible and believe the Bible is because

the Bible deals so directly and unashamedly with the hardest things in the world.

Nothing is swept under the rug in the Bible.

Not the shocking things, not the perplexing things, not the controversial things.

In fact, it seems to me, especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus goes out of

his way to create controversy, like doing things on the Sabbath when he could have done them on Monday.

I think the reason he does that is because hard things, controversial things are moments

when more of him is revealed and more of sin is revealed and in that double revelation of more of him and more of darkness,

he can warn us about darkness and he can woo us to his glory. He knows what he's doing.

...