Let It Go

If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it. [Luke 17.33]

While this passage makes a great stand-alone reference from which to preach or teach about selflessness, it must not be overlooked in its context.

Jesus is specifically addressing end times when He made this statement. There are two references Jesus made that give great depth to Luke 17.33.

First, Jesus mentioned the days of Noah in Luke 17.26. Jesus was clear that everyone was partying and enjoying life when the flood came. Well, everyone except one man and his family!

Then, Jesus mentioned Lot in Luke 17.28. It was business as usual for everyone in Sodom the day it was destroyed. Well, for everyone except one man and his family!

What is interesting in these scenarios is that both Noah and Lot are on record of having purposefully 'let their lives go' as it were in the world's eyes - refusing to cling to those things binging personal satisfaction (pleasure and self-sustenance), and instead, saved themselves by putting themselves in God's deliverance!

To be absolutely clear about His meaning, Jesus warned His listeners about Lot's wife, who, instead of 'letting her life go' into God's deliverance, 'clung to her previous life' by looking back and becoming permanently memorialized for having done so.

"Letting their lives go" did not mean Noah and Lot gave up! It meant they purposefully chose to obey God by stepping out (letting go) of their present circumstances and into God's deliverance! They both had respective choices to make, Noah to enter the ark and Lot to leave Sodom.

The common denominator with Noah and Lot was letting go of life as they knew it. As the scriptures reveal, life as they knew it was self-focused: in Noah's day people were enjoying parties and weddings, and in Lot's day people were enjoying enterprise and life in general.

Jesus' words in Luke 17.33 stand true even to this present day. Those who cling to their lives, focused on their own enjoyment and enterprise, have inadvertently subscribed to their own loss. Those, on the other hand, who let go of their self-pursuits make a calculated move into the Kingdom of God.

"Let it go" didn't mean "give up!" It meant a new direction!

Father, help us all to purposefully pursue Your direction, letting go of our own lives and direction, so that we might serve Your purpose with our lives - thus saving them...