Losing a life

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it" Mark 8:35

I have been contemplating these words for the last while, trying to truly understand what losing a life means, the true meaning of these words as they apply to my life. Many scriptures flood my mind. The Lord asks us to forsake all others to follow Him, to love God with everything in our being, and Paul instructs us to use the things of the world but not be consumed by them. All asking us to set aside what we ‘have’ in this life and set our hearts on eternity. That is one aspect, to be free from our bondage to all things temporal and decaying.

There is another aspect that refers to our daily living and thought patterns. Our thoughts need also to be fixed on God. True, there are essentials of life, which require our capacities. We need to think while at work, focus on our driving, concentration when attending home duties. Between these are moments where our minds are free to wander and contemplate other things. We fill these moments with all manner of thoughts. There also sometimes things that consume our thoughts, distracting us from our primary focus, love for God. These thought patterns need first to be brought into submission, that is surrendered as incorrect, and then consciously changed to dwell and meditate on the Lord, His work in our life, and His word. I read only a few pages of a powerful book that has altered my attitude to my thought life, ‘the practice of the presence of God’ by Brother Lawrence. It’s an old, and incredibly popular, text at the core of which lies an amazing truth. We can experience the presence of the Lord at all times, and know unbroken fellowship with the indwelling spirit as Jesus did. What a revolutionary thought it was to my milk-nourished mind! I sought to take this as a principle into my Christian walk, consciously drawing my mind to the nearness of God and His willingness to meet with me constantly, at any time, with no ceremony.

Expanding on this principle in this context, anything that draws your thoughts away is then breaking your fellowship with the Lord, and to be disciplined. And in this sense, these errant thoughts need to submit to Christ’s Lordship and perfect will, granting you peace over them and then continuing to draw ever closer.

And so the Lord has revealed that to lose my life for Him is to surrender my will and my thoughts and all the physical constraints of my life into His hands that He may work in all things as is right for me.

Revelations 12:11 has a passage I love that inspires endurance in faith for me. It talks about the saints in heaven who stood fast until they received their eternal reward, ‘for they did love their lives so much as to shrink from death’. Loving my life means raising an idol in front from my worship of God, this nullifies my praise, song, service, sacrifice and testimony and endangers my covering of grace. I’m striving to keep the first command, Love God first and surrender my love for the things of the world.