#TreasuredTruth #300Of366 #RawderKidulaKedaha

Today’s culture encourages us to do whatever we can to feel good and be happy. We are all in a hurry to gain the whole world. We say whatever we want, take all the drugs you need to rake, sleep with whoever you need to, use the people you need to, do all we can and  go where we want all in an effort to make ourselves feel good. People kill for happiness, they lie for happiness and they make wrong choices in a bid to create happiness for themselves. We even confuse it for self-love, trying all we can to prove that we please our flesh. Whatever flesh wants, flesh gets. In a culture where self-fulfillment is how do we obey God by denying ourselves?

According to the Bible, the above mentality belongs to the old: One that is not in Christ. Because for them that are in Christ, the old has gone and the new has come. (2^nd Cor  5:17) The old loves the physical and temporary things of this world, the ‘old self’ is all about self-fulfillment, it finds peace in earthly materials is after human approval. Self comes before God. But the new self that God gives us once we get saved, loves Jesus more than any earthly comfort, more than everything that the world has to offer.

We can’t have both, it’s either the new self or the old self that will have control. There is no profit in gaining the whole world and losing one’s soul. (Matthew 16:26) Why should we spend our lives striving to achieve things that are not profitable? God is calling us to say no to ourselves, denying the flesh. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

Denying ourselves means saying ‘no’ to ourselves; realizing that it’s not all about self-fulfillment but about realizing that Jesus is the center of it all. It means going where God wants us to go. It means loving God more than anything, choosing the new self over the old self. Saying ‘yes’ to the spirit and ‘no’ to the flesh. At the cross, Jesus denied himself so that you and I may live eternally. He chose not to save his physical life. May we echo his prayer, ‘Not my will Lord, but may your will be done’

Today you have a choice to make, if you lose your life here on earth you will gain it. But if you gain it now you will lose it in eternity. May God help us today to choose Him over everything the world has to offer;  because that is all that matters.

Selah