“When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?’” – Mark 8:34-36

 

What would you be willing to give up in order to whole-heartedly follow Christ?

We openly express our “desire” to follow God, to know Him better, but at what cost? We all have plans for how we would like our life to turn out. But what happens when those desires conflict with God’s desire for us? What do you do with that? It is an obvious crossroads that we all face and to linger and be indecisive is to ultimately decide that we know better how to run our life.
We “give up” sin and other things as a way to almost barter with God in order to maintain our course towards what we want out of life. We fear total surrender of control because that proclaims humility and our pride cannot have that. We are also afraid that by giving up control we are then susceptible to having a life that is not our “dream” life and that God will deliberately put us somewhere we don’t want to be.
Jesus Himself surrendered to the will of the Father even when it meant that He had to lay down His life.
God is the creator of all things and we foolishly think that when we are in control of our life that we can somehow maintain it. My life, under my direction, is like giving a toddler the keys to a car. Not only would I risk destroying my own life but the lives of those around me. The Man who conformed His will to His Father’s in order to save us from the wrath to come is asking us to do the same as He did, not as punishment, but as reward.
A life that is surrendered into God’s safe keeping is far better than any life we can render for ourselves. The world, the flesh, and the devil have led us to believe that by giving our lives to God we are losing out.
But what do I lose? Despair, fear, addiction, hopelessness, a broken heart? Surely there is far more to gain when my life is counted as loss for Christ’s sake. When David was going to buy the land that the temple would be built on, the owner, Araunah, offered it to him for free! David’s response is certainly one we ought to commit to memory. In 2 Samuel 24:24 David said, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God with that which costs me nothing.”

The Christian Life is costly, sure, but what do we gain? Eternal Life! We, too, were bought at a price. The Son of God’s precious blood was the ransom. If losing my life for God’s sake and finding REAL life makes me a “loser” in the world’s eyes then Lord, may I be the biggest one of all.
“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith…” – Philippians 3:7-9