Books are often most powerful when they introduce us to new people. Reading a life transcribed on a page allows us to hear their thoughts and to see what they saw in a more visceral way than a podcast or film asks of us.

Some authors’ lives are very different from our own, while others bear striking similarities. What is more, they have learned enough from their experiences—their grief, mistake, healing or victory—that they are ready to not only talk about it but write about it. They have processed through their experiences, thoughts, and emotions enough to lay them down on paper for all the world to see.

Within the pages of “Lost and Found: How Jesus Helped Us Discover Our True Selves,” twelve incredible people, brave enough to put their lives on paper, share about how lost they were until they encountered Jesus. In this season of vast unknowns and heavy burdens, both local and global, this book proved to be such a comfort, testifying to God’s power and his love to seek and save the lost. Each chapter of the book, penned by a different person, aims to make sense of Jesus’ seemingly contradictory statement in Matthew 16:25: unless we lose our lives for his sake, we will never discover our true selves. 

Collin Hansen, the editor of “Lost and Found,” writes in his chapter: “In order to find your life, you must lose it for the sake of Jesus…This book aims to help you understand and believe these words from Jesus. We want you to know how you can endure any hardship with faith and peace. We want you to see how love overcomes evil with good. We want to introduce you to the One who brings healing and hope and purpose to life. We want you to lose your life so that God would find you” (21). 

Having grown up in the church, my life has been inundated with scripture and I’ll be straight with you: sometimes well-worn passages go in one ear and right back out. I can anticipate the second half of the verse before my pastor finishes reading it. Sometimes this is a good thing, but more often than not, it means I lose the gravity of the words and cease to remember their relevance in my life. Each narrative in this book aligns personal experience with passages of scripture we know by heart, but rarely take time to meditate on. Through their own testimonies, each individual brings new light to familiar verses, reminding us of the vitality of God’s word and the great changes it should unleash in the way we live our days on earth. 

The chapter of the book that still hasn’t left me is called “You Can’t Have Some of Jesus,” by Sam Allberry, a speaker and apologist at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Allberry’s chapter depicts his experience as a young man learning that with Jesus it’s all or nothing: “Given who he is, you can’t have some of him. Some of Jesus is really no Jesus at all. He doesn’t play that game. He won’t be an ingredient in your perfect life. He intends to be no less than your perfect life” (39).

Even Jesus reiterates this notion that he must be first in our lives when he says:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” -Luke 14:26-27

This passage has always troubled me; I love my family. My parents are two of my closest friends and I would walk to the ends of the earth for my two brothers. They are four of God’s greatest blessings in my life, but Jesus says I have to hate them to follow him?

Allberry brought new insight to these verses for me. He clarifies that elsewhere, Jesus “makes it clear we have responsibilities to our family members. He rebukes the Pharisees for using their religious devotion as an excuse to neglect providing for their parents (Mark 7:10-13)” (41). So if Jesus isn’t throwing honoring parents out the window, what does he mean?

“Simply this: He must come first,” Allberry writes. In Luke 14, Jesus uses a common Jewish idiom to emphasize a point by exaggerating its opposite. Allberry references “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom 9:13) as an example. He concludes, “…when Jesus calls us to ‘hate’ our parents, family, and our own lives, his point is that we’re to love him in such a superlative, unique way that there’s no comparison between our love for him and our love for anyone (or anything) else. We love him so much it’s as though we hated everything else” (42).

This chapter cut me to the core. Weeks later, these questions continue to resurface in my mind: do I love Jesus with a love incomparable to what I have for anyone or anything else? And if I did, would my life look any different? Is Jesus first in my life? Is he all or is he nothing to me?

Think about what it’s like to carry a cross. Think about what it meant in first century Jerusalem; not only were you walking toward a slow, excruciating death, but a humiliating and lonely one. This is the image Jesus chooses to depict what it will feel like if we follow him. Allberry concludes, “We put [Jesus] first to the point that we’re effectively putting self to death. So there is a loss in being found. A loss of self” (43). 

After his conversion, there were seasons where Allberry wondered if Jesus was worth it: “What kept me from [going my own way] was the realization that it would mean going alone. … I either followed him utterly … or I would abandon him utterly” (44). When Allberry finally grasped what Christ’s death meant for him, he couldn’t look back. “[Jesus’ death] changes us. Being found by Jesus in his death makes us new,” he writes. “The process of what Jesus elsewhere calls “denying yourself” (Mark 8:34) doesn’t actually mean we become less who we are, but the opposite. We become more who we are, more the person God had in mind in the first place when he originally thought us up” (45). 

Come meet a quadriplegic, an adoptive mom, an abandoned wife, a former doctor, a former altar boy, an ex-metalhead, a Jewish believer, a retired NFL fullback, Sam Allberry, and others—all of whom were undone (in the best ways) by the gospel. Their stories will move you to smile and rejoice in the mighty God we serve. I have never been more excited to recommend a book. If you want to test drive it first, Chapter 1 written by Collin Hansen is published here on the Gospel Coalition. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claire Zasso was born and raised in California with many books and mountain air. Currently, she works for a Christian international relief organization, supporting hurricane recovery programs. She loves coffee, scuba diving, leading worship with her guitar, hiking in the Sierra Nevadas, jamming to classic rock, and showing others the freedom found in knowing Jesus.