Count It All As Loss

Philippians 3:7-8 is Paul's plea to Philippi to consider everything they once had to be loss "compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord..." That is to say, all your money, your prosperity, your comfort, health, authority, prominence, everything. However, I have noticed in myself and some others the opposite idea.

There are a lot of people, including myself at times, who come to Ozark and tell stories about how great they were in highschool (usually at sports), which is easy considering no one is here to tell the whole story. If it's not sports it's smarts, how many girls you pulled or could've pulled, how well known you were, how much your church adored you, etc. Why though?

Another way that we tend to do this is quite a bit more dangerous. "If I wasn't a Christian I would..." That is not at all how Christ desires us to feel about his grace. We think sometimes that we are missing out! Holy cow, how selfish of us is that!? I have the grace of the living God to save me from hell and make a holy life desirable, but I missed out on all the sex I could've had, all the money I could've made, all the sports scholarships I dropped for you Jesus. Right now I hope you fill as foolish as I do for ever thinking such a thing...Maybe it's when we see it in writing that makes us really know that we are as silly as we thought.

I feel so selfish for ever thinking about what I gave up for Jesus. My word, he took on so much shame when he was the epitome of glory...If anyone ever gave up anything for a Christian college, it would be him. Are we sad; did we get the raw end of the deal from Jesus? Or was the alternative so much better than Christ to us? Let's not ever talk about what we left for Christ, instead what he left for us (Full-ride scholarship to heaven, great job at the right hand of God, so smart that he devised the entire universe). Tell me, what did we give up again?

What it all boils down to is our security with who we are in Christ. I have harped on that a lot lately, and that's because it is a problem for our developing identities as college students. If we are secure in who we are in Christ we will realize that we don't need to brag about any of that stuff anymore, because our new identity is so much more desirable. We didn't give that stuff up, we should be embarrassed that we ever found our identity in those things. Praise God for renewing our minds, and killing the old us. So let's not "give it up" anymore, let's consider it all loss for the sake of knowing Christ as our only identity. God bless you in that desire.