What does it mean to lose your life for God’s sake?
Matthew 10:38-39 says “whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
What if losing your life for the Lord’s sake doesn’t only mean literally losing your life? What if it also means letting God’s refining fire strip away any part of your identity that isn’t apart of the identity he has given you as a child of God. This would mean surrendering your fleshly desires and dying to them so that you might solely seek life in the Father.
Upon receiving a new identity from Christ there is a common practice of making our own additions to our identity. This might look like personal agendas, political beliefs, cultural defensiveness, and loads of other things. While those things might not necessarily be bad, there is a difference between having preferences and allowing these things to become apart of our identity.
If you were to lose your life wouldn’t you also find life in God, opening a door for you to live in greater intimacy with the Father? Why are we holding onto things that are not apart of our identity and not apart of the life we are called to walk in? Jesus asked us to follow him, yet we are following him so slowly because we’re trying to drag old worldly things along with us.
There is a kingdom culture that many of us are missing. We have freedom from sin, no longer being slaves. So why do we not take off the chains that we’ve been liberated from?
So I would challenge you to this. What does it look like for you to no longer refuse to lay down your worldly identity, but surrender it to God? What does it look like for you to live in the identity and life that is found in the reality of being a child of God and nothing else?
