Loving God means resisting the world moment by moment. It’s putting forceful, compelling feelings aside in order to remain obedient. It’s placing another person’s need above our need to do something or be somewhere. It’s choosing purity of mind and body and exercising spiritual discipline that honors God. It’s saying no to impulses that place a higher priority on material things than on people. It’s being real and honest rather than just preserving an image. It’s giving away encouragement and praise rather than taking over the spotlight. It’s staying childlike in our trust of God’s way versus the world’s way. It’s caring more about God’s opinion than man’s opinion.
To gain Christ in our lives, we must lose the world. These’s no such thing as peaceful coexistence on this battlefield. To lose the world, we must move against our fears, choose faith over feelings, and be convinced of Jesus’s proposition that when we lose the world we gain Him: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? (Luke 9:24-25).