Give Up Everything for Christ
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Dimas Salaberrios, Ministry Associate with Christian Union, is a dynamic teacher, speaker, and pastor. His bestselling memoir, Street God, was released in September 2015. Dimas holds a Master of Divinity degree from Alliance Theological Seminary and resides in the Bronx with his wife Tiffany and three daughters.
Transcript
When I was coming to Jesus Christ, I had to give up a lot of things and I think this text that I'm going to read is really about that. Paul was an accomplished Christian leader. He was a leader also among the Pharisees, but Paul gave up everything to follow Christ. And when he was in a Roman jail, he wrote about this to the church at Philippi. This is what he says, "But whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of 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." I find in this faith that we have, too often do we see people just talking about the grace and forgiveness of God, which is incredible, but there's also a giving up.
There's a giving up of oneself. There's a giving up of surrendering things that were dear to our heart, that were sometimes very harmful. When we're following after Jesus, Jesus calls us not to a soft walk, but He calls us to surrender all to Him. Relinquish everything to Him and allow Him to sit on the throne. I love the way in Job, when Satan was about to do an attack on Job, he said in Job 2:4, "Skin for skin, Satan replied, a man will give all he has for his own life." But I love ... throughout the Scriptures, you see again and again the disciples defying even what Satan thought he had. Defying the odds and giving up everything, and often, their own lives, for the sake of Christ. Matthew 13:44 — when Jesus shares a parable, He gives the same notion.
He says this, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid again and from joy over it, he went and sold everything, and he bought that field." I love that. Jesus is teaching us over and over again that He has to be Supreme over all these things in our lives, but sometimes, people allow outside influences to come in and dominate their relationship, and become even greater than their walk with Christ. I remember one time I was going to go on a national television program, and there was a woman by me. She said, "Look, if this place will pay me, I will be a sellout. If they pay me and hire me, I'm down to be a sellout." I remember and I looked at her and I was saying, "Wow, you're willing to do to your own conscience for the sake of a dollar?"
But Jesus calls us to a higher calling. He says this in Matthew 16:26, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?" Jesus is letting us know there is nothing on this planet greater than having pleasure in our relationship with Jesus Christ. This world will perish. Everything in it, at one point, disintegrates or goes down in value. But the relationship that we'll have to infinity and beyond is a relationship with Jesus Christ. So hold onto your relationship with Christ and make it number one. God bless you, keep looking up and keep Christ number one.
