Description
The True Path to Eternal Life: Surrender and Follow Jesus
Our natural instinct for self-preservation may be hindering o… (visit YouTube for more)
Transcript
I don’t know about you, but if I am in danger or threatened, my natural instinct is to save myself. Well, Jesus says that instinct isn’t doing us any favors. Look at Mark chapter eight, verse 35. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life, for my sake and the gospels will save it.
So this instinct of self preservation can actually be harmful, Jesus says. In our efforts to preserve our own lives, in our efforts to be more righteous, so that we’ll stand right before God and not be punished, in all of those efforts, we will ultimately fail. Because these are not the things that are going to save us.
Jesus has made it very clear, hasn’t he? Losing our lives for his sake, and for the sake of the gospel, that is the way to secure your eternal life. And he’s not saying that we have to be martyred in order to be saved. He’s saying that we have to lay down our lives, surrender our self-preservation, surrender our dignity, surrender our self-righteousness, all of those things that attempt to protect ourselves and live our lives for him and for the gospel.
Ah, but we say, I thought the gospel was free. Well, it is freely given and freely received, but there are implications to becoming a servant of Jesus. And one of those implications is we stop living our way. We stop trying to do the things that we think are best for us, and we look to him and we say, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I’m going your way, not mine anymore.
And there are practical implications to this, aren’t there? When we are choosing what we want to do with our lives, we should be seeking God’s direction, his counsel, and saying, God, this is what I’d like to do, but what would you like me to do? In putting to death the flesh and asking the Holy Spirit to grow his fruit in us, in this way, our lives are saved.
Friend, do you want your life to be safe? Then place it in the hands of God. There is no safer place.
