Mark 8:35

“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

                Let me first start with a story;

There was once a little girl who had a fake pearl necklace that she got out of a prize machine. It was her dearest treasure. She wore it every day, and at night, she would set it on her dresser and stare at it as she would fall asleep, knowing it would be there in the morning. One day her father came to her and asked her if she loved him. She, of course, replied a sincere yes. He said, “Then give me your pearls,” The girl began to cry. “But Daddy – no, not my pearls! You can have my doll house, and my barbies… just not my pearls, Daddy!” So he left. The next day he did the same thing, and got the same response over and over again. Finally, the day came when she looked at her father and said, “Daddy, because I really do love you… I’ll give you my pearls.” When she finally opened her hand, he took the pearls out and replaced them with a velvet box. She opened it and found a real pearl necklace.

It sort of seems like an oxymoron when you first look at it – that you have to lose your life to save it, and if you want to save your life you lose it… but you realize that it means two different kinds of lives. One life is the carnal life and the things of this world, and the other is the life that God offers. If we seek the kind of life that is around us, if we seek to save the things of this world – then we lose the sight of the things God has to offer it, but if we seek to lose our life in the holiness and amazing work of God, then he will save it.

                This doesn’t mean, though, that we have to completely deny ourselves the world. It means we sacrifice what means nothing, for the real thing. Today I will give my life and the things I do to the Lord, trusting that he’ll make something beautiful out of it.