You don't hear this too often.
25 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,
26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Very often you hear about love, not too often do you hear about hate. That is an example of how we are not balanced, but Jesus was. Paul shared that he counted all things as dung in order to gain Christ. This is what the Lord is saying here. Bearing your cross means you hate even your own life too. This is what makes life meaningful, that you have something that you are pursuing that is worth more than your life. If you don't have that you are like the story about the "poor little rich girl". All these people who achieve their goals in life and yet are empty and unfulfilled. Tom Brady saying "Is this all there is?" Brad Pitt talking about being empty.
The worst feeling is accomplishing everything you wished for, realizing you are now in hell but not only you, but to make it worse you have encouraged many others to follow you off the cliff.
When you pray about what you want your life to be think of the blessings to Abraham. Yes, I want to be a great nation. Yes, I want to be blessed, yes I want my name to be great, yes I want those who bless me to be blessed and those who curse me to be cursed. But more importantly I want to be a blessing to others and I really would like to be one that brings blessing to all the nations.
Think about Bernie Madoff, perhaps his prayer was to be rich and famous and powerful. He got it, but he is not a great nation, but a cursed nation. He is not blessed but cursed. Those who blessed him got cursed and those who cursed him were not in any way harmed. He certainly was not a blessing to others but a curse.
But Jesus is the one who is truly making a great nation. He is blessed, even by those who hate Christians He is blessed. His name is great, even Muslims and unbelievers revere the name of Jesus. There have been many in history who have cursed the Christians, what happened to them? You had the Jews, gone. You had the Romans, gone. You had the Catholic church, you had one group after another. What about those who blessed the Christians? There was a time when the USA embraced Christians and was called a Christian nation. That was when the US was blessed. Since then the USA has rejected Jesus, the Bible and His words and from that point on we have been cursed.
There are many paths you can take, but only one leads through the cross of Christ, and only that one comes with a seven fold promised blessing.