To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.

If you have lost your life, remember that He promises that you will find it.

If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes.

The principles of gain through loss, of joy through sorrow, of getting by giving, of fulfillment by laying down, of life out of death is what the Bible teaches, and the people who have believed it enough to live it out in simple, humble, day-by-day practice are people who have found the gain, the joy, the getting, the fulfillment, the life.

The man whose eye is single for the glory of Another can be trusted.

You can never lose what you have offered to Christ.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.