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SELF DENIAL & LOSING OUR LIFE

“23 If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.” Luke 9:23-24 (CSB)

The story is told of a mother, who after making her two sons pancakes, heard them arguing about which one would get the first pancake. The mother told her boys about Jesus putting others above himself and encouraged her boys to be like Jesus. The older son promptly encouraged the younger, “you be Jesus.”

Self denial and losing our life is quite counter-cultural in a world that continues to invite us to treat ourselves, and take care of “number one” (referring to ourselves). Our well-made plans leave little room for God to change them, and less room to give ourselves up, or to lose our lives for Jesus.

When we are invited to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we can find areas where loving God is not with our “all” because we are loving our life and our own desires. When it comes to our heart, we find passions that we need to continue to surrender in order to elevate the Lordship of Jesus. When it comes to our soul (psyche in the Greek) we find that our personality and giftedness, which come from God, need to be surrendered to God for His use more than our own. Our mind, and our thought life, can often be filled with worries and dreams of bettering our own life and as a result we aren’t meditating on Scripture and the obedient life God desires from us; the same is true of many of the sins that entangle us — we give them a lot of thought. And in America, many of us struggle with the denial of our own physical bodies. From candy and desserts to addictive substances, not to mention sugary drinks — our consumption of “extra” is a reality for most of us. Add to that a world full of comforts (cars are now being sold with massaging seats — mind is blown), moving our bodies and using our strength and maintaining it are all things that lead to lives that lack in the department of self-denial and losing our life.

Jesus commanded this as a requirement for following Him, and He modeled it when he denied himself and lost his life for our benefit — He went through with His death, burial, and resurrection to forgive our sins and restore our relationship with Him. To increase our allegiance to Christ, let’s practice more self-denial and losing our life for Jesus.

A long way to go,

Jeremiah Holcomb

Hello Maple View family, what an amazing month April has been. A month filled with amazing events like our Easter Service, Formation Students, a visit from Johnson University, wrapping up our series on “The Fruit of the Spirit”, and a great day at the Move-Up Mixer.

Formation Students Question & Answer Panel

Another major undertaking, and extremely exciting event that began in April, and Lord willing, will wrap up in May is the remodel of the MV Teens Youth Room upstairs. We had some Youth and Young Adults join us over their shortened Spring Break to help with painting, and the remodel still continues and will soon be ready to show off to everyone as the finishing touches are placed on a space we pray will be used to continue the spiritual growth of the MV Teens.

But the finishing of the remodel isn’t the only exciting thing happening in May, as May 18th will be graduates day with a Karaoke Party that night for the Teens upstairs, as well as a message on 1 Timothy 4:12.

There is a lot of exciting events on the horizon for the MV Teens, including some awesome summer events as well. We look forward to a “Marvelous May” and “Cool Summer” summer with the teens, and hope their parents will join us as well.

Sincerely,

Eric Vance, Associate Minister of Youth