Losing All to Gain All

It’s already August! Can you believe it? It wasn’t long ago we said ‘Happy New Year’, and then BOOM — the pandemic hit. Some now count 2020 to be a lost year. I disagree.

Don’t allow the present chaos side-track your vision and purpose. Each day gives you an opportunity to reflect on your successes, failures, achievements, losses and challenges.

As you do, count your blessings. Acknowledge your failures. Learn your lessons. Appreciate your gains. Focus on what truly matters. There’s more good to come.

The power of personal reflection

In last week’s post, I wrote about why it’s necessary to embrace your purpose over the enablers.

I’ve reflected on that post and it continues to speak to me. I don’t want to lose track of my purpose and serve my enablers. That would be a tragedy.

Remember that your worth is not measured by where you live, what you drive and what you earn.

Create time to reflect on the trajectory of your Christian walk with God. Consider how much you are aligned (or not) to God’s purpose for your life. Doing this enables you reposition yourself to His unique call on you.

Losing all to gain all

Earlier this week, I was reflecting (again) on a verse of scripture and God reminded me of the path to ultimate gain in life.

If we desire to live a life of eternal consequence and significance, this (God says) is the pathway — which I will share in a minute.

First, consider Philippians 3:7-8:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. 

The pathway to ultimate gain is the path of ‘loss’; loss of self-will, self-pursuit, self-convenience, self-accolades and self-privileges.

The Christian life is a ‘two-fold’ yet single call to death and life; death to sin and self, made possible by the substitutionary death of Christ, and a life of righteousness enabled by His Spirit in us — Romans 6:1-11.

This is the pathway of total surrender; not the ‘surrender’ we ONLY sing about but the one we follow through on with practical obedience. Abraham gave up his Isaac. Paul lost his privileged background and achievements. Christ laid down His life.

God is calling us to radical obedience that will come at a personal cost, to lay everything down before Him and for Him. Click To Tweet

To gain all, we must be willing to lose all. Grace abounds.

Photo by Martin Castro on Unsplash.