I admire Paul. Whatever happens He seems to keep his focus always on the Jesus. Often I get sidetracked, even this morning I wanted to write this blog but I decided to first answer all my WhatsApp messages clean up all my emails and do several other mundane tasks that were not really necessary. And this is being sidetracked from writing a blog. I also get sidetracked from the calling God placed on my life, or I get sidetracked from my focus on living for Christ.
But Paul has his priorities right, for he says; 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 (Phil. 3:8 NLT).
This hearts cry is one to make your own and to make it part of your thinking as well. Because this thinking, this way of living is not a living that the world recognizes. By our earthly training we never got trained in this.
Let me elaborate a bit more on this hearts cry of putting Jesus above everything. Paul calls it an infinite value of knowing Christ. There is no money in the world that will hold the value of knowing Christ. I want to safeguard it at all cost! I want to keep focused on not losing it. I will not put anything above knowing Him and doing His will. In these verses Paul says he discarded everything else. For him there was nothing left but Jesus.
I want to know Christ, I want to become one with Him. Is this your hearts desire also? Are you longing or Him and His will in your life more than anything else? Do you want to see His kingdom established on this earth and in your life and His will to be done here as it is in heaven? Are you counting everything else garbage besides Christ?
The writer of the Hebrews uses the analogy of running a race in Hebrews 12. He first explains to us that we need to strip of every weight that slows us down. These things that we need to strip of is not sin, he deals with that later. I think in life we accumulate a lot of things that can slow us down in following hard after Christ. These can be things of the past that we hold on to. Emotional heartaches that we should let go of. Hebrews says, strip these things of! It can also be that our physical possessions hold us back in following hard after Christ. Hebrews says, strip them of. There are many things in our life that can hold us back that are not sinful, but at the same time they are not helpful. They slow us down in following Christ.
In the next verse Hebrews speaks about how we run the race well. It is very simple, we run the race well when we keep our eyes focused on the goal, that is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith. He is the beginning and the end of our faith. He is the highest example in the life of faith. When we keep our eyes on Him we run the race well. When we keep our eyes on Him, we will see very soon that besides Christ, all is garbage.
Are you ready to lay everything down for his glory?