Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding that I may keep Your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to Your testimonies and not to selfish gain! Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in Your ways. Confirm to Your servant Your promise that You may be revered. Turn away the reproach that I dread, for Your rules are good. Behold, I long for Your precepts. In Your righteousness, give me life! (Verses 33-40) Italics, mine
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as dung (refuse, offal) in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him. Philippians 3
I live near the famous South Coast Plaza mall in Orange County, California. On any given day, it's filled with well-heeled men and women mulling over expensive shoes, imported perfume, splashy diamonds and every other worldly thing imaginable. Outside, their Teslas, Mercedes, Audis and Roll Royces are parked by valet at the entrance by Macy's. It's not unusual to see people whose bodies have been enhanced and altered so that they look younger or, arguably, more beautiful. Pretense is sold for top dollar where I live. It's easy to get caught up in what one doesn't have here. Just as easily as it is to define one's self by all her stuff.
On Christmas several years ago, Bill surprised me with a gift. It was the last present under the tree, as it happened. A ring I'd admired at a jewelry store in Los Angeles. I couldn't have been more surprised. Bill spent his Christmas bonus on it. We all cried because it was just so heartbreakingly sweet. And the ring is, of course, gorgeous! I'm wearing it now. But I lost it for a while. Thought at first that someone had taken it out of our house, which, by the way, I'd turned upside down. Even took the drains apart in the bathroom thinking it could have dropped down into their depths. It just wasn't there! I cried. And cried. For a couple of months it was daily on my mind. Then one day I randomly pulled some clothing out of one of my drawers and heard a clinking on the wooden bottom of it. Curious, I emptied the drawer to find my ring. Tears of joy. Backtracking in my mind to figure out why it was there. I couldn't believe I was reunited with the precious gift I'd lost! Misplaced, really. Caught up with other clothing that lay on my bathroom counter the fateful day it went missing. Bound up in the tee-shirt I'd been wearing and thrown into a drawer. Dear to me more for the sentiment and love it represented than for its actual value, which is considerable.
On the day I asked Jesus into my life as my Lord, I received a priceless gift. Forgiveness of my sins. Which are considerable. A home in heaven which is indestructible.There is nothing at South Coast Plaza that can repair my little heart. Nothing I can buy or sell to correct its many-faceted failings. No guru can make my neediness vanish with a mantra. No evangelist can erase my debts and make me clean by declaring that God owes me prosperity and painless living. I can't buy what Jesus offers. It is a gift. Paid for by Him. Every other thing on Earth is dung compared to my relationship with Jesus. The word is only used once in the New Testament. Paul meant it to be shocking. It refers to poop, of course, but also to offal, the guts of sacrificed animals. What is thrown away and disgusting. If we are looking to Him for worldly gain, we still have our eyes on refuse. Christ is our gain! In Him we lack nothing. Without Him we have nothing of value. Just as the ring is valuable to me because of the love and sacrifice with which it was given, so is the greater gift of my relationship with Jesus.
We need to work. To make money. To survive and give. But monetary gain shouldn't be our life focus. For one thing, we don't take it with us. All my clothes will remain in my closet when I die, my car will be in the garage and my jewelry left for my kids. It can't be what we live for! Life, true life, is knowing God. Created by Him for His purposes on the Earth He formed. How do we think we can live without our connection to God? Filling our hearts and lives with eternally worthless things that somehow have come to give us self worth? It's a lie. It's all dung in the end, when we take our dying breath, and all we are able to do is look around at all the things we will leave behind. It's like Paul wanted us to smell the difference between the fragrance of Christ and the stench of our own reliance on things.
Once again it's a matter of the heart. Always with God, a matter of the heart. Where our hearts are our treasure is. When we understand that God is crazy about us, wants more for us than we can ever give to ourselves, we are free to love Him with abandon. And we are, also, freed from the idea that knowing Him is all about who we aren't...can't be. That reproach the psalmist is talking about. The dread of the rules we'll be under if we draw close to God in a covenant relationship. Make Him all kinds of promises we can't keep. It's when we revere God as our Eternal Father Who gives us parameters, not random rules, that we are freed to live as children, disciplined and watched over. Tenets that work in the order of the universe God, our Father, created. They are good! They make sense! And we obey because we know His precepts give us life! Not death. The rules don't save us! Obeying them is the result of a heart changed by the exchange of a gift. No mall has it. It comes from the hand of God. Everything is of nugatory value compared with it. Nothing is valuable without it. Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life in Your ways!!!
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as dung (refuse, offal) in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him. Philippians 3
I live near the famous South Coast Plaza mall in Orange County, California. On any given day, it's filled with well-heeled men and women mulling over expensive shoes, imported perfume, splashy diamonds and every other worldly thing imaginable. Outside, their Teslas, Mercedes, Audis and Roll Royces are parked by valet at the entrance by Macy's. It's not unusual to see people whose bodies have been enhanced and altered so that they look younger or, arguably, more beautiful. Pretense is sold for top dollar where I live. It's easy to get caught up in what one doesn't have here. Just as easily as it is to define one's self by all her stuff.
On Christmas several years ago, Bill surprised me with a gift. It was the last present under the tree, as it happened. A ring I'd admired at a jewelry store in Los Angeles. I couldn't have been more surprised. Bill spent his Christmas bonus on it. We all cried because it was just so heartbreakingly sweet. And the ring is, of course, gorgeous! I'm wearing it now. But I lost it for a while. Thought at first that someone had taken it out of our house, which, by the way, I'd turned upside down. Even took the drains apart in the bathroom thinking it could have dropped down into their depths. It just wasn't there! I cried. And cried. For a couple of months it was daily on my mind. Then one day I randomly pulled some clothing out of one of my drawers and heard a clinking on the wooden bottom of it. Curious, I emptied the drawer to find my ring. Tears of joy. Backtracking in my mind to figure out why it was there. I couldn't believe I was reunited with the precious gift I'd lost! Misplaced, really. Caught up with other clothing that lay on my bathroom counter the fateful day it went missing. Bound up in the tee-shirt I'd been wearing and thrown into a drawer. Dear to me more for the sentiment and love it represented than for its actual value, which is considerable.
On the day I asked Jesus into my life as my Lord, I received a priceless gift. Forgiveness of my sins. Which are considerable. A home in heaven which is indestructible.There is nothing at South Coast Plaza that can repair my little heart. Nothing I can buy or sell to correct its many-faceted failings. No guru can make my neediness vanish with a mantra. No evangelist can erase my debts and make me clean by declaring that God owes me prosperity and painless living. I can't buy what Jesus offers. It is a gift. Paid for by Him. Every other thing on Earth is dung compared to my relationship with Jesus. The word is only used once in the New Testament. Paul meant it to be shocking. It refers to poop, of course, but also to offal, the guts of sacrificed animals. What is thrown away and disgusting. If we are looking to Him for worldly gain, we still have our eyes on refuse. Christ is our gain! In Him we lack nothing. Without Him we have nothing of value. Just as the ring is valuable to me because of the love and sacrifice with which it was given, so is the greater gift of my relationship with Jesus.
We need to work. To make money. To survive and give. But monetary gain shouldn't be our life focus. For one thing, we don't take it with us. All my clothes will remain in my closet when I die, my car will be in the garage and my jewelry left for my kids. It can't be what we live for! Life, true life, is knowing God. Created by Him for His purposes on the Earth He formed. How do we think we can live without our connection to God? Filling our hearts and lives with eternally worthless things that somehow have come to give us self worth? It's a lie. It's all dung in the end, when we take our dying breath, and all we are able to do is look around at all the things we will leave behind. It's like Paul wanted us to smell the difference between the fragrance of Christ and the stench of our own reliance on things.
Once again it's a matter of the heart. Always with God, a matter of the heart. Where our hearts are our treasure is. When we understand that God is crazy about us, wants more for us than we can ever give to ourselves, we are free to love Him with abandon. And we are, also, freed from the idea that knowing Him is all about who we aren't...can't be. That reproach the psalmist is talking about. The dread of the rules we'll be under if we draw close to God in a covenant relationship. Make Him all kinds of promises we can't keep. It's when we revere God as our Eternal Father Who gives us parameters, not random rules, that we are freed to live as children, disciplined and watched over. Tenets that work in the order of the universe God, our Father, created. They are good! They make sense! And we obey because we know His precepts give us life! Not death. The rules don't save us! Obeying them is the result of a heart changed by the exchange of a gift. No mall has it. It comes from the hand of God. Everything is of nugatory value compared with it. Nothing is valuable without it. Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life in Your ways!!!
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