As a Christian one of the things that always amazes me is the fact that much of what I learned before I came to Christ about how to obtain joy and peace in life must now be totally turned on its head if I am to lead a joyful and peaceful existence. Christ’s teachings go totally against what non-Christians believe in almost every area of life. I think John Stott summed up these paradoxical teachings best when he said: “The astonishing paradox of Christ’s teaching and of Christian experience is this: if we lose ourselves in following Christ, we actually find ourselves. True self-denial is self-discovery. To live for ourselves is insanity and suicide; to live for God and for man is wisdom and life indeed. We do not begin to find ourselves until we have become willing to lose ourselves in the service of Christ and of our fellows.”1
Let’s take a brief look at Stott’s four paradoxical points:
If we lose ourselves in following Christ, we actually find ourselves
Mankind is hopelessly trying to find what his ultimate purpose in life is. Sadly, for the non-Christian, when he looks back in his old age he finds so many things he wished he could have done differently and when he looks forward he finds a life fast approaching an end with no joy and peace to look forward to, but only a purposeless existence. For you see all of mankind is born with a spiritual vacuum that only Jesus Christ can fill. So when we lose ourselves in following Christ we tap into our purpose for living, which is to glorify Jesus and enjoy Him forever. Thus we find ourselves by losing ourselves in Christ!
True self-denial is self-discovery
Self-denial is the exact opposite of what our flesh is wired for. We want to enjoy the pleasures of life and avoid the pains that life throws our way. But one of the great secrets I have learned as a disciple of Christ is that I can rejoice in suffering.2 You see when I am going through an intense trial I have learned that God will use it for good, and His glory, if I only let Him, for God often will use our sufferings to bring about a glorious result. When I deny myself of the easy road in life I soon, as a child of God, discover a whole new joy and purpose for the trial that was sent my way.
To live for ourselves is insanity and suicide; to live for God and for man is wisdom and life indeed
If you really want to find true freedom in life, my friends, then may I submit to you that the best way to do this is to become a bondslave of Christ. I believe the reason that living for ourselves is insanity and suicide is that living a Christless life leads to eternal damnation, no real joy and peace in the now, and a hopeless search for meaning. But to live for God and for man is true wisdom and life because Christ promises to fill our hearts to overflowing with peace, joy, meaning and eternal life when we depart from this world.
We do not begin to find ourselves until we have become willing to lose ourselves in the service of Christ and of our fellows
Finally, Christianity is the only worldview that transforms lives from bondage to free, from sinner to saint, and from hopeless to hopeful. For the non-Christian the struggle of life, without the existence of Jesus, makes his journey here on earth a mere exercise in futility. The only reality he can count on is physical death. For our non-Christian friends, they will die, sadly without ever knowing why they were born in the first place! Only when one loses himself in Christ and service to others will he find out why he was created in the first place!
1 Quote by John R.W. Stott: “The astonishing paradox of Christ’s teaching an…”
2 Please see my recent devotion: Rejoicing in Suffering – Bible Apologetics – A DAILY DEVOTIONAL
The Bible: The Book That Won’t Stay Quiet……..m.r. neveu
Every generation tries to bury the Bible and its preachers under skepticism, revisionism, or polite neglect. And every generation discovers the same thing.
The Bible refuses to stay buried. It keeps rising…historically, prophetically, spiritually…because truth has a habit of outliving its pallbearers.
Stott is one of those rare figures whose life and work feel tailor‑made for a devotional writer. He was not flashy, not self‑promoting, not a celebrity pastor. He was a craftsman of Scripture, a shepherd of souls, and a man who believed that clarity is a form of love.
John Robert Walmsley Stott (1921–2011) was an Anglican priest, theologian, and global evangelical statesman. For over 60 years he served at All Souls Church, Langham Place in London, eventually becoming Rector Emeritus.
He was known for expository clarity, pastoral gentleness, intellectual rigor without arrogance, and a global heart for the church…
Sounds like someone called Curt Blattman.
Billy Graham once said Stott was the most respected clergyman in the world. But Stott himself preferred to be known simply as a “Bible teacher.”
Geez.
Ok Space Ghost – by the numbers we soar.
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1. The Bible’s Stubborn Historical Footprint.
Critics love to say the Bible is “just a book,” as if two thousand years of global upheaval were caused by a paperback with good marketing. Yet the Scriptures sit at the crossroads of archaeology, ancient literature, and lived human experience.
• Archaeology keeps catching up to Scripture, not correcting it.
• Manuscript evidence is embarrassingly abundant. The New Testament alone has over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, dwarfing every other ancient text.
• The Bible’s internal coherence, written across continents, centuries, and authors, remains unmatched.
If the Bible were a conspiracy, it would be the most incompetent one ever attempted. Too many authors, too many centuries, too many witnesses, too many enemies to get anything like a soap opera straight. Proverbs? Psalms? REALLY?
Conspiracies collapse under scrutiny. Scripture thrives under it.
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2. The Bible’s Prophetic Precision.
Prophecy is where skeptics get nervous, because predictive accuracy is notoriously hard to fake. The Hebrew prophets didn’t deal in vague fortune cookie optimism. They named names, dates, empires, kings, rises, falls, exiles, returns. They spoke with the confidence of people who weren’t guessing.
And then Jesus arrives, landing in a manger with donkeys. Not as a random spiritual influencer, but as the fulfillment of a prophetic architecture centuries in the making. The New Testament writers weren’t inventing a Messiah. They were recognizing Him.
If Scripture were merely human, its prophetic track record would look like my day planner for the week: flexible, fuzzy, forgettable. Instead, it reads like a divine audit trail.
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3. The Bible’s Uncomfortable Honesty.
If undivinely inspired old people in dirty robes and stringy beards with olive juice, basking in the sun, wrote the Bible to make themselves look good, they failed spectacularly.
• Abraham lies.
• Moses doubts.
• David sins spectacularly.
• Peter panics.
• Paul persecutes.
• The disciples flee.
The Bible is the only ancient text where the heroes are consistently unheroic. It reads like truth because it behaves like truth…unvarnished, inconvenient, and unwilling to flatter its audience.
A fabricated religion would tidy up the mess. Scripture leaves the mess on the table and says, “Watch what God does with this.” (The late splendid Pastor Charles Stanley grabbed this saying with both hands and a toe.)
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4. The Bible’s Transforming Power.
The most stubborn evidence for Scripture’s truth is not archaeological or philosophical. It’s personal. Across cultures, languages, and centuries, the Bible keeps doing the same thing:
• convicting the proud
• comforting the broken
• reorienting the lost
• humbling the powerful
• healing the wounded
• and calling ordinary people into extraordinary grace.
If it makes you feel better, you can argue with a theory. You can debate a manuscript. But you cannot dismiss a global, centuries- long pattern of transformed lives. The Bible doesn’t just inform. It interferes. It interrupts. It redirects. It resurrects.
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5. Why We Defend It.
We don’t defend the Bible because it’s fragile. We defend it because people are.
The Scriptures don’t need our protection. We need theirs. We defend the Bible because it defends us…against despair, deception, self-destruction, and the quiet erosion of truth in a world that prefers comforting lies.
To defend Scripture is to defend the only story big enough, true enough, and gracious enough to hold the human soul.
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Truth doesn’t tremble when questioned. Lies do. The Bible stands because everything else eventually falls.
Gilt-edged, Mr. Blattman.