Trophies to Trash

TIL THE DAY I DIE

Do you remember receiving your first trophy?  (I mean the first one you earned – not just got because you were a participant!). Our baseball team was 17-1 in 5^th grade, losing our very last game.  But wow, I remember holding that trophy and putting it up in my room.  And as time went on I added more trophies.  Nowadays teams seems to get medals not trophies as much. So you may have a few of those.

Did you know trophies can be more than awards?  Trophies can be what you treasure the most – like some possession or accomplishment or your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Prayer:  “God, today, please show me what my personal trophies are.  Help me to see the things that I treasure more than you.

Grab Your Bible:  Read Philippians 3:7-14 (The Message).

^7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

^10-11 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.

^12-14 I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

So Paul says if anyone has a right to brag, look at me.  And he begins to list the things that he had accomplished in that culture. So let’s try to make it a little easier to hear from Paul.  Let’s say Paul lived in 2018 and was a Major League Baseball player.  Paul might say something like this, “I am the grandson of Babe Ruth.  I have been an all-star every year I played.  I have won the World Series the past 4 out of 5 years and I was the MVP a few years.  My batting average is .340, the highest in the league and I have won 10 Gold Gloves.  (If you are not up to speed in baseball, ask your brother).

But here is where Paul gets real.  He says I count it all like doggy doo compared to knowing Jesus.!  Wow!  That is seriously hard stuff.  You see, Til the Day I Die is about really considering what is most important to us.  To you!  To me!  Paul says that everything I am, everything I have accomplished, everything I possess is trash when I hold it up next to knowing Jesus.

Prayer:  God, help me to learn to treasure you like Paul did.  I want to really, really know You.