Survivors

7/22/2010 - Survivor

“Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.”
Luke 17:33 ISV

Have you ever seen someone trying to save their own life? When your life is at stake you may do whatever it takes to try and save it. You do whatever it takes to try and delay death as long as possible. Someone drowning will fight to get to a place where they have air. Someone falling off a cliff may reach to grab onto anything for leverage to try to keep from falling. You may wrestle with a gun wielding assailant if you thought that it would help you save your life. The fear of death brings out a strange type of preservation courage. It exists in the moment of fear to preserve your life. The attempt to save one’s life is filled with desperation and urgency. It’s the type of life one lives when they are constantly trying to preserve what they feel they have built.

The self-made success story is sometimes the most dangerous person to be around. What they have created, they alone feel that they have built and will do anything to try and protect it from destruction. If anyone or anything around them becomes a threat, they will attack. They are like an armed man behind their self made fort, designed to protect their home and their wealth. They hold onto what they have created so tightly that anyone can become an enemy. It is war!

Whatever you consider to be the source of your life, you will desire to protect. It brings you happiness and joy and satisfaction. Yet our true life is only found in Christ. It is not found in material wealth or even other people. True life is found when one gives up their right to save our own lives. We cannot save ourselves no matter how hard we try. No matter how much money we amass, no matter how much we earn, no matter how impenetrable we think we are, we cannot save ourselves. When we give up the right to try to make ourselves right with God, we obtain that which we seek: A saved life. It is through our life in Christ that we discover what life is truly about. It is through our life in Christ that we begin to feel the true joy of living. Until then, everyone is an enemy. Everyone has the power to stop you from living the life you want. Everyone is suspect. How then can we have genuine relationship? How then can we have genuine intimacy when everyone around you is a potential enemy, stopping your quest for life?

Once we agree with God that we cannot save ourselves, and that the only way to be saved is to give up our own right to obtain true life on our own, we begin to live. In Christ, we lose a finite existence and obtain an infinite one. In Christ we give up the fear of losing the life we try to amass and receive the life He has planned for us from the foundation of the world. In Christ is how we truly become survivors.