I'm a Loser


Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

I realize that I called this blog, How to Win in College, and I really haven’t talked much about college so far. I was wanting to write about things that were relevant to my life in that moment. So I started thinking, how does a college student win? What differentiates a winner and a loser? Is the winner just more successful? Is the winner the one who is more popular? Is the winner just more happy? What makes the loser the loser? 


I wanted to win. What I mean when I say that was that I wanted to live for Jesus to the fullest. I wanted to walk in a manner that glorifies God. He’s done so much for me and wanted my life to reflect the goodness of His love. What that meant practically was actually a lot of things. One example was to commit my single years to abstinence. The Bible says:

Hebrews 13:4 “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”

And the Bible also says that we should more than just sexually pure. It asks us to be pure in every way. Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Seeing God was more important to me than having sex right now. I have been in a long term relationship since January and we have not had sex — we haven’t even kissed — because seeing God is so much more valuable and brings us both so much more joy than the instant pleasure that sex could bring us. I believe this firmly because I am in the happiest and healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in!

To win, I had to give up a lot of different things that I knew were keeping me from winning. For many people, those things are money, sex, social status. There is nothing wrong with any of those things but if our grasp for those things is far stronger than our grasp for God, winning will be hard. 

When I started college, I had this verse in mind often:

Matthew 16:25 “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”  Read more about this verse here!

This verse basically says that those who want to save their lives are the ones who want to keep themselves out of troubles, discipline, persecution (to cause to suffer because of belief), or even death and by doing this they are denying Christ because they would rather live in comfort and pleasure. Those are the ones who will lose their lives to eternal punishment.

But those who will lose their lives today, meaning that they will sacrifice the comforts and pleasures of this world and instead live for Christ which may include that persecution or pain for God’s glory, will gain their lives eternally in endless joy!

The thing that’s so wonderful is that the joy can start today. The ones who try to save their lives never have any joy because they are striving to please themselves which is never satisfying but the ones who lose their lives find joy today because they are giving their lives fully to the One who gave up His life fully for us. 

If being a loser means I can have eternal life and joy, then sign me up! 

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