Investment Advice

Luke 9:23-25
If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.
But if you give up your life for My sake, you will
save it (v.24).

A stock market consultant recently suggested, “People
should always sell when they have a better place
to put their money.” While true, the challenge is
recognizing when one place is better than another, which,
of course, no one can identify with any level of certainty.
I typically respond to this sort of financial advice with a
resounding “Duh! No kidding?” It’s like telling investors to
buy low and sell high. Please tell us something we don’t
already know.

Jesus once gave a crowd of people some fresh
“advice.” He said, “If you try to hang on to your life, you
will lose it. But if you give up your life for My sake, you
will save it” (Luke 9:24). I doubt there were few, if any,
in the crowd who said. “Well, duh.” Instead, most stood
there scratching their heads, thinking, Huh?

Although Jesus drove home this thought on more than
one occasion (Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33), it’s not exactly
the kind of advice people hear every day. And while it
caused them to stop and think, those who truly heard Him
understood He wasn’t talking about holding on to our
physical life. The word Jesus used for “life” is the word
psyche, which is the Greek word for the soul. He was
referring to our inner life and clinging solely to our own
efforts and plans to secure it. In essence, Jesus was saying
that without Him, joy and meaning will slip through our
fingers.

Self-reliance is a poor investment to hold on to because it never works out the
way we think it should. And it prevents us from discovering the life our souls crave
in a friendship with Jesus and living for His purposes (John 15:15).
What might you be hanging on to that you need to “sell” in order to find your
life in Him? —Jeff Olson

more›
For My people have done two evil things:
They have abandoned Me—the fountain of
living water. And they have dug for themselves
cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!
(Jeremiah 2:13).

next›
As we surrender all we have and are to Jesus,
what happens? How do we then view the stuff
of this world?