| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Fully alive” Our Bible verse for today: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.” Luke 9:24 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Take your eyes off of yourself” You are your own most favorite person. It’s true of all of us. You’re with yourself more than you’re with anyone else. You think about yourself more than you think about anyone else. And you talk to yourself more than you talk to anyone else. It’s true of all of us and therefore our natural human tendency is to be self-absorbed. It will happen automatically and naturally unless we work to make it otherwise. Jesus spoke to this issue in Luke 9:24. There He said, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.” That same statement is recorded five times in the four gospels, each time in a slightly different context but with the same meaning. The more we focus on ourselves the smaller our lives are. The more we focus on God and others the more fully alive we are. This is one of the mysteries of life in the kingdom of God. You give to get; you let go in order to receive; you to die to yourself in order to really live. The Christian music group “Big Daddy Weave” once recorded a song based upon this Biblical truth. The name of the song is “Give My Life Away”: “I earn it just to spend it, throw it out when it’s broken Like a hamster on the wheel I keep making the spokes spin Do I have what I have or does it have me? There’s only one way I know I can be free: I wanna give my life away I wanna give my life away Move every little thing standing in the way Oh I wanna give my life away” That’s what Jesus was talking about. He continued the thought in Luke 9:25 when He said, “For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself?” When we’re preoccupied with ourselves, we lose. When we shift our thinking to God and to others, we win. It seems counterintuitive, but life in the kingdom of God often is because God’s ways are different from ours. The truth is that the more we take our eyes off of ourselves and focus instead on serving God and others, the more fully alive we will be. God Bless, Pastor Jim |
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