Lose Your Life
He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. – Matthew 10:39 NKJV.
I heard Dr. Eddie Lieberman share his testimony twenty something years ago at a conference. Dr. Lieberman was raised in a Jewish family but after going to a federal prison he received Christ as his Savior when he was 19 years old. After his release from prison it was nine years before his mother would see him. For this family conference he was not allowed to stay at the family home. He had to stay at a motel.
At the family conference Eddie was told that his decision for Christ had brought shame on his family and other Jews. His uncle was a multi-millionaire and offered him a job paying five times as much as he was earning if he would renounce Christ. This confrontation with his family went on until 1:30 A.M. in the morning. Dr. Lieberman then went back to the motel and said that he thanked God for allowing him to go through a little persecution for the sake of Jesus. He never saw his family again.
Dr. Lieberman would be the first to tell you that Christ was worth it. He found his life by losing his Jewish life and family. He lost all that he was but gained eternal life through Jesus Christ.
God calls on us through His Word to make some tough decisions. We are called on to live a moral and upright life. We are called on to abstain from evil. To have real life we must make a total commitment of our lives to the Lord. We must lose the life we lived before to gain the abundant life our Lord wants us to experience now. No part way, no half way commitment will do. Dr. Lieberman could not live in the Jewish world he had known and follow Christ at the same time. We cannot continue living as we did in the past and follow Christ at the same time. We must die to the old to be alive to the new.