Winning at Losing

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Matthew 16:214-26 NIV)

We all like to hear about winners, don’t we? We learn from the moment we learn how to talk that life is all about winning. Our parents put us in sports, dance, music lessons, etc., etc., etc. They spout off platitudes like, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” While I do not discredit the truth of that statement, the reality is that they want us to win. They want us to be able to show off the trophy. They want to bring Grandma and Grandpa to the recital to watch the perfect performance. They want to be able to brag about their kids when they are socializing with their friends. Grandparents love to be able to brag about how wonderful and together the grandkids are. It is normal, human behavior, and we are all guilty to a degree.
One of the most degrading and humiliating names one kid can call another is “loser”. How many times have you overheard someone say something like this: “He is such a loser!”, or “What a loser!”? While I do agree that there is great life value in striving to do your best, and I encourage it, the simple truth is that there is a lot of “losing” involved in just doing life. The fact is, we are all losers. If you are alive, you will lose something, or lose at something. (No, I am not referring to your car keys, or your glasses. I want to go deeper than that!) The platitude should be, “It’s not whether you win or lose, its whether you lose gracefully and learn anything from it when you lose.”
I received a call from my son recently, and he was very upset. Several months ago, he bought a new-to-him car that he was very proud of. It was his second car. It was a very nice car. The one he got when he was 17 was starting to wear out. I co-signed for him on the loan. He was involved in an accident recently, and after the new car had been in the shop for a while, he got a call from the insurance company stating they had decided to total the car instead of repair it. He was both angry and sad that he had wrecked his new car and would be losing it. It was really his first major purchase as an adult. It feels bad to lose something that you really like. My conversation with my son made me sad, because I knew he was disappointed and hurt. But I also knew this was a great opportunity for him to learn a valuable life lesson, one that we all need to learn. Sooner or later, we are all going to face loss. It is not a matter of “if”, but “when”.
I have lost a lot in the course of my life. Within the last 15 years, I have lost two jobs, both of which I really liked, and both of which paid reasonably well. The first time was one month after my wife and had signed the papers on a new house purchase and had moved into the new home. We moved into a much larger house, and the payment on the new house was about twice what we were previously paying for the small house. The first time it happened, after the house purchase, I felt like I had been sucker-punched. I felt like the rug had been jerked out from under my life. We had twice the house payment to make now, and I was out of a job. I drew unemployment until it ran out, worked odd jobs, and managed to keep from losing the house by spending my pension. It was almost a year before I went back to work full time again, and the pay wasn’t as good as the job I had lost.
The second time it happened, I was a bit angry because I felt like I had been unjustifiably terminated because I had been misrepresented and misinterpreted over some issues that occurred at work. However, I wasn’t nearly as worried as I was the first time because I was able to look back over and remember how faithful God had been in taking care of us after the first job loss. It was a difficult time, but life is full of difficult times, but God was faithful, and it eventually all worked out.
I wanted my son to understand this as he bemoaned his car loss, and I shared that with him. But, like most things in life, just hearing it from someone else doesn’t impact us as much as we need for it to. When it is someone else’s story, it is just theoretical. Theoretical life is much easier than real life. When it happens to you, it hurts, but you just have to live through it and sort it out as best you can and move forward. You have to live through it yourself, not just hear someone else’s story.
As I told my son, everything in life is temporary. Everything in our lives, even the things that seem so strong, permanent, and sure, are temporary, because that is the nature of reality. Some things seem much more permanent than others. The centuries old gothic cathedrals of Europe certainly seem more permanent than a mobile home, but even those monolithic architectural masterpieces will not last forever.
We cannot allow our hearts to become permanently attached to temporary things. We use them and enjoy them, but we do not bind our hearts and minds to them. God’s creation brings Him glory, and He gives it to us for our pleasure and use, but we worship (bind our hearts) to the eternal God, not His creation. To worship created things is idolatry, which we are strongly commanded not to do. Things cannot give us LIFE. Only God gives LIFE.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

Jesus is not telling us to commit suicide. Jesus is not saying that if you are out in the ocean on a cruise ship and you fall overboard, and someone throws you a life preserver, that you must refuse to grab hold of it and allow yourself to be saved. He is not saying that if you find out you have a terminal illness you should refuse a life-saving treatment. When He says “but whoever loses his life for me will find it”, He is saying, “Bind your heart to me, not the things of this world.” Put Jesus first in all things, because HE is the author of life. He is the only One who can save your eternal soul.

“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, and yet forfeit their soul?”

We win when we lose. You can be a “winner” by being a “loser”! You win at gaining eternal life by losing your grip on things that are destined to perish anyway. Because of that, I do not mind standing beside Jesus and hearing someone say, “What a loser he is!” There is no higher compliment!