The phrase “In it to Win it” is often used to describe the mindset of those competing in athletic events, but is also used regarding “Winning at Life”.  Everyone wants to be a winner, right? Wining means that you are better than those competing against you, and you get want you want, your desires are fulfilled.

I once saw a bumper sticker that read “He who dies with the most toys wins.” In our culture, a successful life, or winning at life, is determined by the things that one can acquire before the end of life. Things like wealth, social status, educational status, land, houses, and cars have become the litmus test of a successful life. The world we live in uses fashion, sport, magazines, social media, TV shows, and movies to say “Be in it, to win it, get what you can now, and as much as you can, for when life is over, that’s it, it’s over.”

Jesus had another way of looking at winning in life, in the here and now, and in eternity.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Matthew 16:24–26

So what does that mean, “lose his life”? Do I have to die to win?
For those Jews listening to Jesus speak those words, the cross meant one thing, a physical death. Jesus was saying that following him meant being ready and willing to forfeit everything, even your life. Losing one’s life for the sake of Christ also carries the mindset of putting aside my desires and making Christ’s desires my own. I get lost in Christ.

For a Christian, a successful life is a life that you give up, or lose to gain Christ.

So instead of an “In it to Win attitude” have an “In it to lose it attitude” Lose those things that hinder you from walking with Christ.

^“ 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 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, “Philippians 3:8-10