WIN, lose, no Draw

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:8 ESV)

In life we seem to always want to gain something, win, be in the lead. Society has pressured us into a mindset that having bigger and better things, fast cars, large homes, large income from corporate America represents success, or, that we have it better than the next person.

I can remember growing up in a family who never had to worry about providing because we had everything we wanted. My grandfather owned a very successful wine and beer distributorship and a trucking company. Life was good and the family was good and everyone was happy. I had everything and every opportunity to do all the great things a kid wanted. I can remember the large stacks of presents at Christmas time and it sent a clear message to me as a child that my family was well off and I was a grandchild who was spoiled rotten. Life began to happen and as I got older I had an image to uphold, an image of success, money and winning in the life of sports. It didn't come without a price; everything has a price. I had begun to live beyond my means which added stress and failure in areas of my life I had never experienced. When I met my wife, I felt I had to hide my failures. I didn't want to expose my false life of success and I needed to maintain this facade in order to win her over and be a winner. The reality was that it didn't matter to her. We came from two very different lifestyles and yet I didn't want to lose her. As hard as it was on our marriage,  I realized I had to lose that lifestyle, lose some things in order to gain her as my wife and keep her. She would never be able to keep up with my lifestyle and neither did she want to. This brought a lot of strain in our marriage as we went through the years.
Christ has taught me that I have to lose some things in order to be a winner. Not a concept I grew up with.  We are familiar with the scripture in Matthew 16:26 that says,..."What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?..." My wife is my world and in order to gain her trust, love, and life together I had to make some serious adjustments and lose myself, the image of success I carried around all the time.
In our relationship with Christ we must lose our mindsets, possessions, and clutter and count it as a loss. Because Christ doesn't need any of that and if we are in His image and created by Him then He wants us to be stripped of all that changes what He has created us to be. Some of us have so much, that Christ's identity of us and our identity are like water and oil. We must count it all a loss and in doing this we are able to gain Christ. We can see and hear him clearly and He will be a much bigger part of your life than ever before. Let Abba be your success, your image and love on Him without stuff getting in the way. There is no draw in your life with stuff. When you lose, you gain everything, you gain Christ for life.