Getting rid of the religious garbage to gain Christ
Philippians 3:8 “Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.”
What is Paul’s everything that he’s talking about? What is this everything that is worthless? In this same chapter Paul opens up with describing his standing with the jewish faith. He goes on to make the case that he was the “model jew”; he had arrived. In terms of religious who’s who, Paul was that; he had status, knowledge, title, respect, heritage….he had it all. This was his everything. In this verse he says that its all worthless. His last name, church he grew up in, seminary degree, books he wrote, awards he received, respect throughout his denomination…..its all worthless compared to the value of knowing Jesus. In fact, everything else is like garbage and should go out to the road on Friday for pick up.
Many of us, who consider ourselves “followers of Jesus” are caught up in this same mess of focusing on our “everything” when it comes to our practice of religion. Far too often we find ourselves holding on to our last name, church heritage, fancy degrees, awards, honors, theology, how we are viewed in our denomination and we count these things as more valuable then knowing Christ and we leave Jesus at the road on Fridays for pick up because we are so consumed with being “religious” in the eyes of the world.
I repent of my everything and pray that God would give me the grace to see that everything (status as a pastor; degree from Duke Divinity; respected speaker; leader; etc) as garbage compared to knowing Jesus and that my whole focus today would not be about becoming a part of the who’s who within the religious circle but my focus would be on gaining Christ.
chadpullins@connect2crossroads.com; www.wedesiremore.com
We wake up every morning and head to work so that we can keep building our ‘everything’. Our ‘everything’ is who we are. It is hard to keep focused our our Christ mission when we put so many distractions in our way. I amaze myself with how much time I can waste working on worthless ‘everything.’
Good stuff. You seem to have your hand on the community. I spent 4 years on that side of town in Fayetteville. Let me know if I can help in any way.