Forfeit

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 

Matthew 16:24-26

One of the primary characteristics of a follower of Jesus is that they have denied themselves. To surrender our life to Jesus means that we are willing to lose our life. And when we deny ourselves–giving up our “rights” and the way we think our life should go–when we lose our life, we’ll discover the upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God. We’ll discover that we have found more life than we could possibly imagine.

This message was not popular in Jesus’s day. This message is not popular today. Instead, the message of the American culture is “I get to live my truth” or “I get to express myself in whatever way seems right to me.” This is not the way of Jesus.

There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way that leads to death.

Proverbs 14:12

All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.

Proverbs 16:2

When we decided to surrender to Jesus, invited the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, and chose to live the Christian life, we gave up our “No” to God. The process of discipleship–the process of sanctification and holiness–is that more and more the only answer we have left for Jesus is a “Yes.” We must be willing to totally and utterly give up on the “American dream” if we want to truly follow Jesus.

We’ve given up the right to demand that our material preferences, relational preferences, career preferences, sexual preferences, moral preferences, and social preferences be met. Our life is not our own. We were bought at a price and that price was Jesus’s death on the cross.

The Christian journey is a journey to the cross, not a journey to the palace. Only on the other side of “death of self” is there new life in Christ. We become a new self, a transformed self, a surrendered self, whose broken, sinful heart is made whole and clean. We are born anew and we experience that new birth daily.

Are you still saying “No” to God in some area of life? A “No” to God only brings death. But, a “Yes” to God brings a kind of death that leads to a resurrection of new life.

Give God your unconditional YES!