Luke 9:23-25
“Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?”
Luke 9:23-25 NIV
On earth, we get one lifetime. That's it. No more and no less. What we do in this life determines how we will spend eternal life. So if we live our lives trying to bring fulfillment to ourselves and seeking to achieve things that bring honor to only us, we're going to end up losing everything of eternal value.
There are no trailer hitches on hearses for a reason: All we take with us into the next life is our relationship with Jesus and with those who love Him. So let's not pursue what is ultimately insignificant, inconsequential, and perishable. The only lasting investment for our lives is Jesus.
There are two lives we can live, two us’s we can be. The life we create ourselves, the ego-created self, the self that is shaped by our circumstances, key voices, our trauma, our successes, and the world, it’s a self that is not the true us. Then there is the God-created self, the self that is shaped in His image, the self that we were created to become.
Now in order to become our true self we must lose, die to, the false ego self, in order to become alive to my God-self, the divine us. We all start our lives with the ego self, and to lose this life is a choice that God offers to each of us. To save us, to save our lives, to live from our small self, is actually not living, not living our true self, it is to lose ourselves in a self that is shaped by the world, a small self, that is not really me anyway.
To be a disciple of Jesus, a follower, is an invitation to lose the life we created and to become our true self, our created in His image self. It is to deny the self we have created and to daily walk the way of Jesus into our true self. The small self looks to gain the things, material or approvals of the world, yet it misses the joy and beauty of being truly us.
So Jesus poses the question, what is better, being you or gaining the world? Jesus came to rescue us from ourselves to Himself, to be our true self. The process is one of awareness of the false self and denying its desires, dying to its ways, and following Jesus closely. That’s what disciples do.
We become who we are in Him through intimate personal encounters of God, in whose image we see ourselves. We first encounter us in God and then we are transformed by the encounter. Discipleship is not a work hard at changing self program, it’s a walk close and an encounter. It’s about denying, dying and following, all of which happens from the intimacy of personal encounter, following closely, and being a disciple.
We must choose to lose the life we have created daily as we follow Jesus intimately into a fuller expression of our true self. We will not try and save what we have created, we choose to lose that life that we may have true life. We want to be our true self more than be the us the world would want, demand, and shape us to be. We don’t want to gain the world and lose our true self in the pursuit.
If we are going to be Jesus followers, His disciples, we're going to have to be willing to walk in the way of the cross. Doing so means giving up our self interests and our pride. It means we live to honor Christ and to bless others in his name. And our trip to the cross must come every day!!!
Father, thank You for this day and the blessing of life today and the breath of Your Word. Lord, let Your abundant blessings be my friend and family’s portion today. Lord, help us to surrender all parts of our lives to You, to take up our cross daily as a willing sacrifice and to cry out, "Thy will not mine be done." We pray that our old self-life will remain firmly nailed to the Cross. Lord, use us to be someone’s blessing today.
Father, we love You. Amen !
Comentarios