Loser

As we come to the middle of the week, I find myself still reflecting on the sermon that was preached at church last Sunday. The theme that has caught my attention is the idea that we need to be willing to lose some of our cherished assumptions in order to allow God the create something new in us. This reminds me of a shirt I got at a youth conference 5-6 years ago.

The front of the shirt has just one word on it: LOSER. As I'm sure you can imagine, this leads to a lot of interesting conversations when I wear the shirt. Perhaps a sign of how much good there is left in the world is the large number of strangers who, upon seeing me wearing this shirt, will come up to me and try to "convince" me that I am not a loser. It is at that point that I let them know this is actually a biblical reference and show them the back of my shirt which reads:

Whoever finds his life will lose it.

And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:39

Too often, we go about our lives ignoring whatever God has planned for us.  We make our own plans and tell God that they are more important.  We make elaborate and busy schedules, and what do we end up with?  A life that is somehow beyond our control.  A schedule that controls us instead of us controlling our schedule.  We find ourselves stressed and ridden with anxiety.  We find that whatever control we thought we had was more illusory than real.

What would we find if we gave over to God that need to control our lives from the beginning?  Perhaps our need for control would step in occasionally, and we would still have stress and anxiety.  Or, maybe we will find that God really does have a plan for us that is already worked out.  All we have to do is listen and do as we are called.  I still struggle with this, so I do not know the outcome.  What I do know is that, at worst, our lives will be the same as they are now.  At best, we will find that God has created something new in us that could only be there because we first allowed ourselves to lose.