Devotional

Losing our Life

Life: Soul

In Mark 8:35, Jesus is not necessarily referring to your physical life but rather our soul, since the original Greek translation of the word ‘life’ in this verse is ‘psychēn’, meaning soul.

Unfortunately, thousands of Christians are martyred daily around the globe for their faith, more today than any time in history. Yet, while your physical sacrifice for Christ may not be called for, your soul sacrifice is. 

Remember that our soul is three components made up of our mind, will and emotion.  Paul reminds us to ‘offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship’ (Romans 12:1).  We are also instructed to ‘continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philippians 2:12), because while our spirit is saved as a Christian our soul is not. 

Jesus calls us to sacrifice our soul (mind, will and emotion) to Him daily.

Both for Jesus and the Gospel

It struck me that Jesus asked for two things in the Mark 8:35 invitation.  

He first asks us to commit our life to Him. This is salvation, which is giving our hearts to Christ when we are born again.

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (‭‭Romans‬ ‭10‬:‭9‬) ‭

Secondly, and don’t miss this, we are also called to lay down our lives for the gospel. Gospel is the Greek word ‘euangeliou’, meaning the good news about Jesus, from which we get the word evangelism.

So ask yourself, are you sacrificing your life (soul) for evangelism?  We usually think this is only for those with the title of an evangelist, like Billy Graham’s. However, Jesus is calling all those that are in Him to do so.

Promised Blessings

In a separate passage in Mark 10:29-31, Jesus promises that if anyone abandons everything ‘for Me and the gospel’, they will receive a 100 fold blessing on earth and eternal life. Now that’s a promise to bank on!

As a Christ follower, if we want to save our life (soul), we need to lose it to Jesus (salvation) and for the gospel (evangelism). The result is abundant blessings both on earth and eternally.

Financial Update

Desalination Market Opportunity

As of 2025, nearly 2 billion people face absolute water scarcity. California, Spain, Australia, and India are all dealing with the same crisis: not enough freshwater to meet demand.

One solution: Turning seawater into drinking water. It's called desalination, and the market hit $27.8 billion in 2025, projected to double to nearly $60 billion by 2034. That's 9% annual growth on something the world needs to survive.

We live on a planet that's 71% ocean, yet we're running out of water. Desalination fixes that by removing salt from seawater. Israel gets 80% of its drinking water from desalination. Saudi Arabia operates the world's largest facility, producing 228 million gallons daily.

What makes this interesting for investors is the certainty. Unlike trendy tech stocks, water demand isn't speculative. People need water. Cities need water. Farms need water. When aquifers run dry and droughts intensify, governments have two choices: build desalination plants or face catastrophic shortages. Most are choosing the former.

The easiest way to invest is through water-focused stocks and ETFs. Companies like Veolia (NASDAQ: VEOEY) and Xylem (NYSE: XYL) are major players in water treatment and desalination infrastructure. American Water Works (NYSE: AWK) is the largest U.S. water utility exploring desalination for drought-prone regions. Energy Recovery Inc. (NASDAQ: ERII) makes the energy-saving devices that go inside desalination plants worldwide, every new plant built benefits this company.

For hands-off investors, water ETFs like Invesco Water Resources (PHO) or First Trust Water ETF (FIW) provide diversified exposure to the entire water infrastructure sector, including desalination, without picking individual companies.

Desalination plants are expensive to build, energy-intensive to run, and face environmental concerns about brine disposal. But these challenges are being addressed through renewable energy integration and better waste management technologies.

Coastal populations keep growing. Freshwater sources keep shrinking. The world needs desalination more every year, and that demand translates into steady, long-term growth for the companies solving this problem.

Water is life. When investing aligns with meeting genuine human needs, that's where both purpose and profit tend to intersect. Desalination offers exactly that combination.

Tech Update

NotebookLM: Great AI Content Creation Assistant

I was recently introduced by a friend to NotebookLM by Google. NotebookLM is Google’s AI-powered research and writing assistant. Unlike general-purpose AI (like ChatGPT or Gemini), NotebookLM is grounded entirely in the sources you provide. I have recently started using it to produce videos and infographics for Solomon Circle devotions, like the two shared last week, which I’ve added here for reference:

What I appreciated is that I asked it to create these from the actual script of the devotion and explicitly noted that the Bible was the source of the information to reference. The results were accurate and not distorted by secular content that most of the general purpose AI models are trained on.

In addition to videos and infographics, it can be used to create podcasts, presentations, reports, and more.

What’s best is while it takes some time to produce the content, the free version is very generous, allowing you to create up to 100 total notebooks and 3 videos per day. In the case of the video creation, it took about 15min., so I just let it run in the background while doing other work.

Hope you enjoy experimenting with it and would love to hear of content you create for evangelism or discipleship.

Health Nuggets

Good Ole H²O (Water)

There are so many benefits of drinking water, yet the average person doesn't drink the recommended daily allowance. Men should drink at least 15.5 cups of fluids per day, and women at least 11.5 cups per day - this includes water from all beverages and foods (roughly 20% of daily fluid typically comes from foods we eat). If you are active or are exposed to hot climates, increasing the amount is also important.

Drinking water brings a wide range of health benefits for our body and mind. Such benefits includes:

• Boosting energy and fighting fatigue

• Improving cognitive functions 

• Supporting kidney/urinary health

• Maintaining cardio vascular health

• Lubricating joints and cushioning organs

These are just a few of the benefits. Drinking water is a very important part of maintaining our health, it’s great for our body system, and it helps prevent health issues.

SO DRINK UP! STAY HYDRATED!

Note: Health Nuggets are opinions and not medical advice.

Trivia Corner

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