Losing without losing honor: winning over losses.

A man in honor who does not know it, is like a beast that perish. That was the saying of a wise man. When a man is stripped of everything, the last thing you are left with is your integrity and integrity commands honor. Integrity restores honor and many other things. This is not a piece about a smart writer who has never flunked anything. It’s all about sincere expression of the heart. Many times, our losses are due to our own errors, ignorance or incompetence. Without an attempt to externalize several things, there are times; we lose not because we were poor, or evil. Not because we were bad or demonic but we lose because of external factors and interferences. Napoleon Bonaparte once loss a war as a result of an unexpected weather condition; yet he was one of the greatest warfare strategist that ever lived.

I know a man who had gone through a profitable business venture and failed. Rather than taking it against the people who seemingly impacted his chances of winning in this business; he did not. He refused to be bitter. He became better for it. He saw those folks some months after the event. He loved them. He respected them and celebrated them the more. There is an enormous power which flow from you when you do that. This man believed that it was all over with. He cannot change the past. He had to move on with his life. I know another man who failed in a great relationship. Rather than hating the partner who jilted him for another man, he loved her. He still prayed for his ex-lover. He sought for the happiness of the same.

 If we live long enough, times and again, we will get into certain mess. We will be involved in some venture that will not work the way we envisaged. Certain things will not go as planned. You have probably heard of that saying that:  It is better to plan and fail than not to plan at all. I add this that: it is better to act and fail than not to act at all. It is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for who you are not. It is better to wake up and see yourself cheated than not to have risked at all. 

So you are wondering: how do I lose without losing my honor?-It’s when I forgive and forget. It is when i count it all loss for the sake of the cross of Christ. Forsaking all that mattered to me so that I may gain the Christ and the essence of His resurrection. It is when i rebuke revenge and vengeful spirit. It is when i refuse to be bitter when I lose. It is when i refuse to go after the winners, struggling over their trophies. It is when i count my losses; accept them and move on. It is when i refuse to cut the jugular of my betrayers. It is when i celebrate those who are still in their own limelight. For life is not all about winning alone. It is as well about losing. It is all about seasons. We will all have our own moments... if we will wait for our own time and chance. The time will change. The tide will turn. And will be more... as we all age, there will be a tilt in the balance of things. Above all, there is no one who is ever forgotten in the very book of life.

Finding the un-lost God...

I have seen how we can be so blessed and not even know it. Having been privileged to visit Clearwater; a small town within Manitoba Province. Lo! There was no network for the phone service provider I normally use. I couldn't even make phone calI or receive calls. It was like being in Ijebu town in Nigeria; West Africa. We can be sad when we realize that we cannot get all we want. But we hardly step back to see all what we have. All the opportunities we can convert, et.al. Isn't it funny how we seldom fail to see what we've really acquired over the years?

I am finding out how people are so different and how they're also the same everywhere you go. “Migration continual” everywhere you go; fro rural to urban, fro urban to urban. Everyone is seeking for something. We are all looking for something better. We want the Golden Fleece. We want a better life. We seek for economic values, financial worth, enduring benefits and gains, social securities and more. We convince ourselves that these are what we are looking for. But just as we reach them. We feel the search has to continue still. In the actual fact what we are really searching for is like a north star, like an ideal that may never be touchable. Could this be the reason why in that process of searching some of us sometimes get caught up in the rat race. We lose our sense of reasoning.

Somehow someone once said: "Until you lose yourself, you can’t find yourself." Therefore, we don't even look before we leap any more. We just throw ourselves on…we go with people, we dabble into situations, we join a ritual, we become member of a committee, we join a group on social networking site, without giving a thought to the responsibilities involved. Without proper scrutiny; we are already involved without proper questioning. Therefore, self-loss is inevitable and it is becoming a phenomenon. It is one thing that separates the matured thinkers from infantile thinkers. Its one thing to get lost; it’s another thing too be lost. I may not clarify the difference. I may just hint on the difference. Just read on.
We must be careful not get lost in other people's folly. It’s like getting caught in a spider web. You may see through it, but you are stuck anyway. At times, you don’t even know if you are seeing clearly or not; for why would you end up in such a mess in the first instance? It is the same thing when it comes to being lost. It is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. I believe that we can actually avoid getting lost. And if we have lost our sense of identity in one way or the other. It is in Christ that we can see our true destiny recaptured, renewed and recovered.

SELF-LOSS.

There is this sense of self in us that doesn't like to lose control. We don’t want to be tethered like a horse. We struggle with the control panel of life. We always want to be in charge. We travel, we meet new people; we find ourselves among new groups. Our identity is challenged. Sometimes, they want us to do certain things so that we can be accepted. The peer pressure comes on. The battle to be what people want us to be instead of what God want us to be rises. Sometimes, at the lowest ranking of priority is the struggle to be who we really wanted to become. Fear sets in. We fail to realize that we owe no man other from God.
Everything was given... People were only tools through whom things were actually given to us. Although, people do lay claim to the good they did for us. All the glory must be to God. He is the only wise God. And He deserves all our praise.
He did not ask for anything from us. He has given us benevolently. That is why you are without debt in God’s records. It tells me that you must be very important to God. And you are very precious. “There’s no one like you here on earth”. You’re so unique that somehow scientists would have to go through some cloning exercise to get even a fragment of your resemblance in guise of your clone. And even that in its very best will be your counterfeit. This tells me that somehow, you are more than who, or what you really think you are. You are a masterpiece… A treasure… You are to God, what a man will call his Pension earnings...that is the result of his lifetime's labor. You are worth more than a thing to God. You are a child of God! And as we travel around the globe in search of some golden fleece, let it be said that you lived like a people who refused to lose self-identity for any ephemeral things. Why? Because in interaction, in relationships, people easily forgets who they are; and in bid to identify with others; they lose themselves.

Although, I recognize that struggle in the centre of our consciousness; which tell us that we must never let go. We just want to resolve everything at once. We want to understand everything. Our brain box was never made to understand all our experiences. We therefore throw ourselves into the arena…into the Dens of Lions and the arena of wolves in guise of self-abandonment. This self-loss is the beginning of crisis. It means that you do not know who you are. It is a situation wherein we are no longer valuing who we are. We are so fooled into thinking of acceptance that we lose sight self worth. We lose sight of our self-value, self-validations, self- appreciation and more. And even all these are the least on the scale. Why? Because they seem to be self centered if taken to the extreem point.

When we get lost in the physical sense of things; we can use such things like the GPS, Maps, Guides, to retrace our steps. We can even avoid getting lost by maximizing these things. Although, a man can get lost geographically, and still retrace his steps. He can get back to the true course. He may never be able to do the same thing if he got lost in his spirit. We must watch out not to be spiritually lost. We may watch against losing our properties, our friends, even families but things can happen that may lead to their loss. We must watch out never to be lost on our own. As we try to help those who are lost back unto course, we must watch out, that we ourselves don’t get lost.

Being lost is self-destructive. The worst thing that can ever happen to anyone is to be lost in ideals, values, character, morals, spirit and more. There’s a loss of property; which so many people cry over. It’s not a big deal. It’s even better to lose such material possession than losing self. Why? Because you can get such material things back after loss; but not the loss of one self. It is the loss of self that is the most terrible thing. It took the blood of Jesus to redeem man from loss at the very first time it happened to the first Man called Adam. He was lost in the world of a stranger's beliefs system-who told his wife and him that they will never die by contradicting God's instruction, which was to never eat of a particular tree in Eden. So what happened next? There was a way of escape provided for man was through God's only Son-Jesus Christ. He came in the form of man to save man. He came to redeem you and me from where we've lost it. This is the story of salvation you must have heard several times.

Self-loss was ended through Salvation brought to man at the cross when Jesus was crucified. He brought man back to God. It was like disappearing into oblivion…someone literarily went into such darkness of hell to bring man back into light. The loss of one soul is such a big deal to God; not to even mention the loss of the entire human race.
Today, the loss of self in guise of mind-loss, happens every day. The loss of time has been overtaken by the loss of ideas, ideals and more. There’s been this wrong exchange of authentic beliefs, pragmatic philosophies, realities, simplicities, et.al for wrong and fake things. Somehow, human acceptance seems to be the next. We teem like fishes in the river of identity crisis. It has become so easy to reject God openly. It is not funny. It is sad. It happens everyday.

It’s my belief that, life is a gift from above and it is first a matter of where you stand? What you stand for? Who you stand for? If you don't clarify these things; you can lose yourself. And it can happen to anyone. It can happen so fast, so easily. What is your purpose? What cause will you die for? Why will you want to lose yourself? Does it really worth it to lose self for something immaterial, or something without eternal value? When Christ died for you to buy you back to life in God through His precious blood? Will you really want to lose your mind again? Will you do it for money, fame, game or shame? WiIl you lose your mind for people who would never agree with you in the first place? What will you lose yourself for? If you lose yourself into God, you will find your self… “Whoever will save his life will lose it, but whosoever will be ready to lose his life for the sake of the kingdom of God; will find it…" These were the words of Christ in red! Better to lose self into God than lose self into self, into sin, into worldliness, or crime. Better lose yourself into God rather than evil of self-indulgence. Life is valuable, it is of eternal value and it is a terrible thing to waste.