Christians are big losers
...and the biggest loser wins
You know how the show works. A whole lot of contestants try to lose a whole lot of weight, and the person who loses the most weight (percentage wise) wins. I want to suggest to you that being a disciple of Jesus is a bit similar to this. A Christian is someone who lives trusting in the fact that Jesus is God, came to earth as a man, lived a faultless life, died for the sins and rebellion of all people, rose again and returned home to heaven, where he rules with his father. A Christian is also someone who, in light of all this, lives as a disciple or follower of Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus means learning to live differently, no longer for yourself and your selfish desires, but to live for Jesus and his gospel.
Jesus puts it like this in Mark 8:35;
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
According to Jesus, everyone who lives purely for themselves, trying to “save” their own life, will eventually “lose it”. However, if you give the controls of your life over to Jesus, letting Him call the shots and letting him map out the course of your life, you will “save” your life. So Disciples of Jesus should constantly be trying to stop living for themselves and keep on living for Jesus. And I take it that this is the secret to a joyful, exhilarating and fulfilling Christian life; it is to “lose” as much of yourself as you can. And the more you lose, the more you will win.
So what things do we need to “lose”? Things like selfishness, pride, greed, hatred, impurity and envy. Basically, any sin that hinders, entangles or weighs us down. The more we can “lose” these sins, the more we will “win” as disciples. If you watched the Biggest Loser, you would have seen the joy return to the faces of the contestants as they lost more and more weight. Being a disciple of Jesus is pretty similar; the more sin we “lose”, the more we “win”.
So why do we find this so hard to do? We struggle to do this is because we want to have the best of both world. We want Jesus because he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Sometimes though, we want to hang on to some of our old ways, because they seem to bring pleasure and enjoyment in life too. We struggle to do this because we live in a world that is fat with sin. And we struggle to do this because Satan is a clever tempter.
Solution? Keep looking to Jesus, keep reading your Bible, keep praying to God for strength and keep trusting that God’s ways are best. This will lead to a joyful, exhilarating and fulfilling life.
Keep hanging in there as disciples of Jesus, experiencing the “God life”. The longer I have hung in there as a disciple, the more convinced I am that God’s ways are the best ways. And always remember, when it comes Christian discipleship, the biggest loser wins.
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