Battles And Front Lines Devotional By Rita Springerናሙና

Losing to Gain

What has loving Christ cost you? What about your obedience to Him? Have you ever listed those costs or kept a list of your gains? A young woman once said to me that she did not want the kind of deep relationship I seemed to have with Christ because she did not want to suffer as I had. It shocked me for her to say that. At the time, I thought her concerns seemed absurd. Then I realized that I had already embraced the cost. The glory that God had allowed me to experience, even at the expense of the pain, was worth the price. In the middle of a fight, it’s easy to count the cost. I have wanted to bail out. Jesus even asked His Father to bail Him out in the garden before the cross. Which would be easier—embracing the cost if you knew the outcome or stepping into it without knowing what you would go through? Which is more of a sacrifice?

I often have said that I know how to plan a funeral, but I would need help with a party. Life makes it feel like that. Recently, I sat in a neurosurgeon’s office to discuss the results of my MRI. He asked what I did for a living, and after I told him I was a worship leader/songwriter, he proceeded to tell me that is why my spine was a mess. He said I needed a fusion to realign and fix the damage brought on by my lifestyle of worship. The literal act of worship was disabling me in the natural! In that moment, I felt a holiness and could feel the nearness of God. He could heal me of course, but I knew He was asking me to trust His healing a different way—to lose something in order to gain something else. Weeks later, I had major surgery, and as I write this, I am still in recovery.

Can we endure loss in the natural and God use it to create gain in our spirits? Yes! I’m living proof. However, we need to be willing to hand Him the keys to our hearts. What does it mean to count all things as loss? It means to not think of anything as higher or more important than our relationship with God. I know some of you reading this are wounded. You are tired. I am going to encourage you and say that God has made you ready. You are living proof of trusting God and how valuable it is in the kingdom. You may not know this yet, but your loss has you gaining. Stay there. Count it all loss to know Him well.