Ready for Anything
Toronto has been identified as the most cosmopolitan city in the world. It is host to people of many different cultures who, while enjoying the benefits of this great Canadian city, celebrate their own cultural distinctives. Some festivals are fabulous weekend events that shut down areas of the city as people celebrate. Others are more modest, but just as meaningful to the participants who take a significant portion of their identity from their home country.
Looking at Paul’s words in the early verses of Philippians 3, you get the impression that he wouldn’t just have attended “Pharisee-Fest,” he would have organized it. He got all of his identity from his religio-ethnic background. Paul had all kinds of reasons to celebrate his Jewishness and yet he said he considered that all as garbage for the sake of knowing Christ.
He saw the knowledge of Christ Jesus as his Lord and Saviour as more than the most important thing in his life. It was the only thing. Nothing else mattered. As we mature spiritually, we start to let go of stuff that used to be valuable to us. We count it loss. Notice the words because there are two expressions Paul uses.
First, he talks about “counting things loss.” You may still have it. You may still enjoy it. But whatever it is, you count it loss. You don’t hang on to it and say, “This is mine.” When you count all things loss it changes your attitude so that if the actual loss of something happens, it’s not distressing to you.
This is important because in the next phrase of the same verse he picks up on this, “for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.” This is the second idea, one step beyond counting things loss, it is “suffering loss." God calls us to count everything else loss for Him, but He doesn’t necessarily require us to suffer the loss of all things.
Sometimes when we count things loss, God says, “That’s great, but you can keep it. Just remember that you gave it up.” Sometimes when we count things loss, God says, “Fine! I’ll take that for a while and when it stops being a god to you, I’ll give it back.” Sometimes when we count things loss, God says, “I’m glad you gave that to Me, because I’m going to give you something better in it’s place.” In the last scenario we’ll consider, God simply says, “Thank you, my child. I’ll take that now.”
The thing to notice in counting things loss is that we had better mean it. If you are insincere when say you count something loss and then you suffer the loss of that thing, you will feel the pain. If you mean it when you give it up, you’ll hardly notice its absence. When the supremacy of the knowledge of Christ gets down into your soul. Nothing else really matters.
Check up question 2: Am I prepared for any possible response of God to my letting things go?
Ron Hughes
© October 2008
