Choices

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” – Matthew 16:24-25

I recently attended an event where a woman mentioned that she needed to lose weight for health reasons and that she planned to begin after the holidays. She then proceeded to enjoy several desserts and extra servings of the lunch that was provided.

That mentality reminded me of a weight loss challenge that I was involved in several years ago. On the first day of the competition each contestant would weigh-in and at the end of the event, several weeks later, they would weigh-in again. The person with the largest percentage of weight loss would win a cash prize. One man told me that he always ate a huge dinner and drank a lot of water before the initial weigh-in, then at the final weigh-in he didn’t eat or drink that day to improve his chances of winning.

Denying ourselves is hard to do. We want to enjoy things and very rarely are we excited to do the hard things required to make the necessary changes in our lives. That’s why today’s passage is so encouraging. When we make the choice to follow Christ we are also making the choice to live in the abundance that He provides. That abundance will look different than what we’ve experienced before, but it is so much better.

There is a unique joy and peace that comes when we deny our selfish desires and choose the things of God. There is an excitement about the new creation that we become when we take up our cross and follow Him. Life becomes meaningful because it becomes about Him.

If the women mentioned above would have denied herself the holiday treats, she would have had a headstart for the changes she wanted and needed to make in the New Year. The man in the weight loss challenge may have won the cash prize, but his results were not from a true change of behavior and he eventually had a heartattack.

We often think that we’re enjoying life when we live it our way, but the truth is that our way is very limited and rarely provides the life we truly desire. It’s only by denying our worldly ways of thinking and losing ourselves in following Christ, that we experience life in the most abundant ways possible.