Philippians 3:8

“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.”
Are we willing to lose everything in this world in order to only have Christ left? Sometimes I think we get trapped in the possessions of this world and we forget that Christ is the only thing we truly need. In this generation, it’s all about what you have, the clothes you wear, and what car you drive. We are so focused on the outward appearance of people and we forget to look at their heart. There should be an urgency for Christians because of what is going on around our world. There are so many people that go to church but don’t really know Jesus. Sacrificing what you may want to do during a day to go and share the gospel with someone isn’t easy. We have to cut off the distractions of the world around us and see that God is greater than everything and that we are here to glorify Him, not satisfy ourselves temporarily. In Matthew 10:39 it says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” To me, this relates as counting everything as loss because when we find our life in the things of this world we aren’t finding true life in Christ and are still dead on the inside; however, when we leave all of ourselves behind and present our bodies as a sacrifice to the Lord, we find true and complete life in Him.
Dying to self and true sacrifice was a concept I didn’t fully understand until I came to IGNITE. True sacrifice is really when we leave all of our expectations behind us and we live day by day waiting to see where the Lord would have us go. We don’t wake up saying that, “Today I’m going to do all of these specific things and nothing else because that’s what I want to do,” we wake up and are expectant of whatever the Lord would have for us in that day that may come in between our general routine. The Lord likes for us to come to Him with questions, but we can’t make our plans and not go to Him and see if that is what He desires for you. I can be very self centered and focus of how I feel and what is going on with me and how I don’t want to do something, but when the Lord is the center of our life, the desires of my heart will be His desires for me. Sacrificing what I want to do in that moment and doing what God is asking me to do, He asks us to be others minded and find joy in serving not being served. The Lord is teaching me day by day what that applies to in my daily life, and how I can become more like Christ in this area of my walk with Him. My application for this is to ask one of my roommates how I can serve them in a specific way this week and do something for them.