Give Up Your Life

Give Up Your Life

He gave up his place with God and made himself nothing.

Philippians 2:7

God grants us an uncommon life to the degree we surrender our common one. “If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life” (Matt. 16:25 NLT).

Jesus did. He “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. . . . He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Phil. 2:7–8).

No one in Nazareth saluted him as the Son of God. He did not stand out in his elementary-classroom photograph, demanded no glossy page in his high school annual. Friends knew him as a woodworker, not star hanger. His looks turned no heads; his position earned him no credit. “He gave up his place with God and made himself nothing.”

God hunts for those who will do likewise— people through whom he can deliver Christ into the world.

Cure for the Common Life