Prayer Tip--A Beautiful Life is Given Away (GOAL!)

Most of us spend a good part of our lives learning to look out for ourselves. We want to be respected. We want to get ahead. We want to know that, when the time comes, we will be okay. Much of this is simply being responsible, and some of it is wisdom. But if we are not careful, these instincts can become the whole story, until we begin to believe that a good life is mostly about protecting what is ours and climbing a little higher.

Paul understood that pull. Writing from a prison cell to a church he loved, he held out a different kind of life: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” The verses that follow may have been one of the first hymns Christians sang. And what did they sing about? A Savior who had every reason to grab for status and chose to let it go. Jesus emptied himself. He gave himself away in love.

It is easy to misunderstand what this means. The humility Jesus showed us is not self-hatred. It is not pretending you do not matter, staying silent when you should speak, or letting people walk all over you. The most secure people are often the most humble. They do not need to win every argument or take the credit, and they are never smaller for it. Jesus served not because he had been beaten down, but because he had nothing left to prove. That same freedom is what God wants to grow in you and me.

So here is what I have come to believe. A beautiful life is not measured by how much we accumulate, control, or achieve. It is measured by how much love we are willing to give.

Maybe that sounds good in church, but hard to trust on Monday morning. If you have ever wondered whether love like that is worth the cost, look at the cross. On Good Friday, it appeared that self-giving love had failed. A good man poured out his life, and the world answered with a cross. If that is where love leads, who would choose it?

But think for a moment about the people who have shaped your life the most. I suspect they were not the ones who grabbed for themselves. They were the ones who gave something away for you: a parent, a teacher, a friend who showed up when it cost them something. Years later, even after some of them are gone, their love is still at work in you. Down deep, you already know that love like that does not simply disappear.

The resurrection is God saying this on the largest scale there is. When God raised Jesus from the dead and lifted his name above every name, it was God’s way of telling us that a life poured out in love is never wasted. It is the one thing death cannot undo. Maybe you already stake your life on that. Maybe you are not sure yet. Either way, I invite you to live this week as if it were true, and to watch what happens.