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?