Jesus turns upside down our attitude toward winning and losing

By Dean Collins

No one likes to lose. We are silently and sometimes quite loudly encouraged in our childhood by our parents and teachers, and sometimes even in church, to be winners. Of course when we lose, someone might come along and remind us it was just a game, just a moment, maybe even God’s will. With encouragement and the support of others, we regroup and restart and hope not to lose next time.

Similarly, we are encouraged by many, especially in the financial arena, to save. Save for later, save for retirement, save in order to provide an education for your children, save for a financial downturn. It all sounds good, but as life happens, we sometimes struggle with the discipline to save for important things and give in to the want list that grows in our heads. That want or wish list, of course, is fed daily by marketing and advertising that assures us we really need this item or service to be happy and fulfilled.

Sometimes our family dynamics along with the heroes we have watched and revered teach us to be people who work to rescue and save others from whatever they need to be saved from. We might be in situations where we try to rescue and save others from danger. We try to save businesses from failing. We might feel an obligation to save individuals and groups from what we understand to be legitimate and difficult realities. We who follow Jesus are in the saving business, after all.

The choice to lose

But Jesus tells us in one way not to worry about saving. Yesterday I wrote about the question of Jesus to Peter and Peter’s answer for the ages. “You are the Christ of God,” Peter said, acknowledging that Jesus is the one to be worshipped and followed. But Jesus wasn’t satisfied with that and immediately after Peter’s declaration of faith, Jesus continued, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”

It seems that Jesus wanted his early disciples—and all his disciples—to understand that declaring Jesus as the Christ is a big step of obedience, but it is not the only step. In fact, the next steps will force us to consider many decisions. The next steps challenge us to reorient our priorities and our thinking on many things, including what we should be saving and losing.

A new paradigm

Jesus began this discipleship lesson by telling us that if we truly believe he is the Messiah of God, we must be willing to follow through with the step of laying down our lives in complete surrender. One doesn't carry a cross for decoration. Crosses are used for death. The cross demands that we crucify the old self, the old ways of thinking, the old ways of acting before we can truly commit to following Jesus.

As we make this important decision a reality, it requires us to attack our old ways of thinking and understand the new paradigm; losing results in saving, and profit in this world is not the goal. We are called to forfeit our lives so that we fully embrace the life of Jesus. But who wants to forfeit?! We want to win and then celebrate the victory.

Jesus thinks differently. He knows the secrets and mysteries we sometimes want to learn. But often we are not willing to embrace what it takes to learn them.

We lose; they win

Before we do wise thinking about what money we need to save or understand if we have a role in the saving or rescuing business we must first determine whether we will accept the ways of Jesus and allow him to order the paths forward. When we lay down the old self in surrender and take up our new life in Christ, our first priority is obedience. The rest, with the daily nurturing of prayer and surrender, will inform all other decisions. It will become clear what we need to lose so that we and a host of others can gain the kingdom of God and participate in the renewal of all God declared to be good in the beginning.

When we release our lives into the hands of Jesus we will be amazed at what is gained now and forever!

Your time with God’s Word
‭‭Luke‬ ‭9:23-27‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Photo by Joshua Earle at unsplash.com

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