What Do You Have to Lose?

What do you have to lose?  Has anybody ever tried to get you to try something new by asking you that question?  I’m sure they have, numerous times.  There have been situations in my life when I’ve acted on the query and gained.  Maybe it was a new, and improved. way of doing something, or perhaps it was an introduction to a food or idea.  Other times it was chalked up as a loss, like the time my friend Sue Ann talked me into leaving school without permission. Trying new things is what life is all about, but we have to weigh the outcome, before venturing into unknown territories.

The Apostle Paul was a guy who had it all, according to the Bible.  Wealthy, intelligent, a “godly”, law abiding Pharisee, and a Jew with Roman citizenship. What more could a person of that age ask for?  We know now that what he was lacking was a saving faith in Christ.  If there was ever anyone less likely to become a Christian, it was Paul.  If someone had posed this question to him, his answer would have been, “Everything!”

How about you?  Have you made a personal decision to follow Jesus?  If your answer is yes, what have you lost?  If you said nothing, you might want to check your spiritual connection.  When we step out in faith, the first thing we lose is our condemning sin, Christ paid for it.  We also leave behind the “old person”, the one who was holding tightly to the material world and its attractive, but sin-filled ways. Paul, after his miraculous conversion, tells us this. “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,…”  Philippians 3:7-9.

 Paul had a lot to lose, in the eyes of the world, but he calls everything in his life, before Christ, rubbish, garbage!  It isn’t easy to leave behind what if familiar, but as we hear from this mighty man of God, that there is everything to gain, and no loss.  Perhaps you haven’t made that personal decision yet, or maybe you call yourself a Christian, but your little fist still has a tight hold on earthly stuff. Either way, I ask you today, “what do you have to lose?”.