Give Up Your Life

I don’t know what show or movie this is from but I found it on tumblr haha. But nonetheless, the words that are spoken, even if taken out of it’s original context, is very much true of us and our Christian lives.

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
(Matthew 10:38-39 ESV)

We must give up the lives that we have planned out for ourselves. We think we have the best plan for ourselves but we don’t even know what we truly want, or what truly satisfies us. God created us to be with Him, it was ingrained in our very being when He created us.

We must deny the lives that we think is ours, and say to the old man, I know you no more, for God has crucified you and risen the new man to life. The new man is the redeemed creation for which Christ died, so that we would be able to share in the life He gave for us. We think we can hold onto our old lives and follow Christ, but a lot of the times what we’ve done is just carried our old man around with us, like a burdensome bag that weighs us down. We do this because in reality we don’t want to give him up, because the old man gave us pleasure, though temporary, it was still pleasure nonetheless. We must recognize that we carry around our old selves, our old desires, our old failures, and crucify them, sacrificing them so that we can be born anew. Then we can look at the crucified old man that was once us, and say, I know you no more. It is at that time that Christ is able to truly live through us, because there is now room for Him.

What would it look like to take Jesus’ words literally? What is our personal cross that we must take up and carry? What must we do to lose our life now, so that we can truly have the new life, which is Christ living through us?