Has God ever called you to throw something down? Something in which you find your security or put your identity? It's awfully hard to let go, isn't it? It feels like you are jeopardizing your future. And it feels like you could lose what is most important to you. But that is when you discover who you really are.

Once you become dedicated to a cause, personal security is not the goal. What will happen to you personally does not matter. My cause, my race, is worth dying for.

For "to love" means to hate oneself and to condemn oneself, according to Christ's saying in John 12:25: "He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

Though love repine, and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, - 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die

God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having--viz., life with Himself. It is a question of loosening the bonds that hinder the life...

We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this error, and the same process is at work in our lives. God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives.

God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives.

God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself.

This is the upside-down world of ministry calling. The pathway to freedom is servanthood, the pathway to greatness is slavery, and the pathway to deep and lasting joy—joy that people and circumstance cannot take away—is denying yourself

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.