What Was Gain Is Now Loss

Philippians 3: 7-14

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 
and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 
that I may know Him and the power of His Resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. 

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 
Brothers, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 

Whatever things were gain to me are now loss for detracting from Christ in my life. 

I won't attain the goal of the Resurrection of the dead until Jesus returns, but I will continue to press on, putting in the past what is in the past, and stretching forward to reach what lies ahead, toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

This is a new day, the "first day of the rest of my life." A new start on doing what I can toward the benefit of God's Kingdom that is here on Earth within us now, and will cover the World at His return. 

O my Father, help me, strengthen me to do these things. Teach me how to keep the past in the past, how to reach forward to lay hold of what You are offering me, and to allow the loss of whatever is keeping me from fully embracing You and Your ways in my life. 

Father, you allowed Saul of Tarsis, the Pharisee, to give up all his standing in the community, and the wealth it gave him, to become Paul the Apostle and Evangelist, travelling the whole known World, supporting himself as a tentmaker, and depending on the generosity of strangers to meet his needs. 

I feel like I am on my way to do what Paul did, and I am looking forward to see what that will look like for me. I am not Paul, I am not like Paul in many ways, but I trust that You gave me the dream of vagabonding the World spreading the seed of the Gospel, much like Paul did. 

And I have given up my mansion for a small house, which I don't consider a sacrifice at all, any more than Paul did, in counting all he had before as garbage. 

Father, now that I have turned this corner of ridding myself of that burden and becoming debt-free, please show me step by step what You would have me do to obey You in sowing the seed of the Gospel wherever You have determined is fertile soil. 

Lead me, Father, take my hand and guide me into the very path You have designed me to traverse in this World, until Jesus returns to claim His own. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Blessing For Insult

I Peter 3: 8-9

To sum up, let all be harmonious, like-minded, sympathetic, brotherly, loving one another, kind-hearted, compassionate, and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil, or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead. 

Let's all think the same way, have sympathy for one another, love one another with brotherly/sisterly love, being kind-hearted (not hard-hearted), and considering myself as no better than the one reviling me. 

Not "giving as good (or bad) as I get," but turning the situation around in giving a blessing, a compliment to the other, answering in a soft voice, not yelling back.

Lord, help me to think before reacting, and then responding in Truth, gently, compassionately. Strengthen me to be able to do this, Lord. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

"Healing Of The Nations"

Revelation 22: 2

... And the leaves of the Tree of Life were for the healing of the Nations.

God will never stop working to heal us completely even throughout all eternity!

He will never give up on us.

There will be a whole New Heaven and New Earth, and there will be no more curse; no more sickness, sorrow, wearing out, death, etc. It will be a whole New Universe! Based on a whole new Basis of Existence. 

Since God will finish the work He began in us on the Day Jesus returns (Philippians  1: 6), then maybe we will be His servants who serve Him, and other "peoples" will be the Nations that will need healing.

I don't know; God can make as many Worlds and Universes as He wants, and He's only given us a bit of a glimpse of what will come after this one. 

He has told us that we will, "be His people and He will be with [us] and be [our] God" (Revelation 21:3); and everything will be made "new" (v. 5). We will live with Him forever, and belong to Him. Jesus' Kingdom will never stop increasing (Isaiah 9:7), and we are His Royal Family who will "sit on His Throne" with Him (Ephesians 2:6; Revelation 3:21), meaning that we will help Him "rule" or run this New Creation.

We are God's imagination, and He's made us in His image after His likeness, so we have imagination, too, to create new things out of what He has created for us.  

We can see even now in this life that God has given us so many gifts of abilities and skills and propensities to accomplish whatever our imaginations can conger up when we get together with our purposes and are willing to do the work to make it happen. (As God said in Genesis 11:6.) As a Race of Man we have accomplished so many "miracles" of technology, medicine, manufacturing of goods, quality of life, etc., whatever we've been able to imagine.

O my Father, You are so great, greater than I can imagine. You are good, and our standard for goodness. You are just, and our standard for justice. You are our Creator, our Maker, our Designer; and You are our Model for who You want us to be. 

You sent Your own Son, Who is the same as the Father, to be our Messiah and Savior. And to show us how You are. You gave us Your Law, all the rules to guide our lives, to show us what He would accomplish, and He did. He said, "I have not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it" (Matthew 5:17), which He did in His life (all the civil and moral laws) and His death (the sacrificial laws, as the Lamb of God). 

Father, You have planned out everything that has happened, is happening, and ever will happen, throughout all eternity past, present, and future. And You are so wise and clever to use even what evil people wickedly imagine in their rebellion against You to accomplish Your will and Your plan, so that everything will come out and end up exactly the way You planned it. 

I know I can trust You to do whatever You do for my benefit, even when I am not enjoying what is happening in my life or in the World around me. Just as You used my choices to show me how much I needed You (and still need You, every day), so the freewheeling of the evil surrounding us in this World is to show those of the World their need for You, also. 

Show me, Father, where I am to go, what I am to do, what attitudes to hold, who I am to converse with, what words to use, what lifestyle to display; that You will use me to draw many to Yourself. That I will be used of You to find and gather some of Your lost sheep into Your fold. 

That Your Kingdom will grow to tremendous proportions, and You will receive all the glory for all You are and do.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Your Own Estimation

Romans 12: 16

... Do not be wise in your own estimation.

Sometimes when we compare ourselves and our accomplishments with others, we will see how far they are ahead of us in some way and feel envy for their achievements, or see ourselves as better than they are and become vulnerable to pride. 

This is why we are not to compare ourselves with others. Each one of us is gifted differently from everyone else, so we'll always find inequities (II Corinthians 10:12). 

But we each are accountable to our Lord (Romans 14:4). 

Having studied Scripture for so many years, I could look down on others who have not had that opportunity. But they would be able to look down on me in some other skill or talent in which they excel. 

O my Father, please help me to see others as You see them, not in the light of my own experiences. Teach me to value them as You do, and to value myself with the worth with which You see me. Help me to always remember how sinful and depraved I was when You found me, to humble me before You, and in the sight of others, to consider their needs before my own. 

Thank You so much, Father, for Your great Love wherewith You love me. Help me to love others with Your agape Love, humbling myself before them, whatever it may cost me. 

Because I know You will always provide my every need, and whatever is more than my bare necessities is to share with others who don't have even that much. 

Teach me Your ways, Father; Your generosity, Your compassion, Your tenderness. That my life in this World might show forth Your character through my personality, to draw others to Your great Salvation. 


Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

God's Love

John 3: 16-19

For God so loved the World that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whosoever would believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send His Son into the World to condemn the World, but that the World through Him might be saved.

So what is this Love by which God loved us?

The World does not understand what Love is. It teaches the concept of eros, which is physical, sexual love. 

But God's love is even greater than the phileos, the love of a friendship. 

It's agape, the true love of wanting the very best for the one loved, regardless of the cost to us. It is sacrificial love. "God so loved that He gave ..." and what He gave was His most precious, His beloved Son. 

This is the Love by which God loves us. The Love He puts into our hearts, when we realize how much He loves us. This is the Love that is to guide our thinking and our relationships and our lives. When we love God, we will trust Him, and not give anything priority over Him. And when we love one another we will be obeying all the laws pertaining to our relationships, in not lying, or stealing, or coveting, or any other activity that would harm our relationships. 

Jesus said, "I came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it" (Matthew:5:17). As He lived His life, he fulfilled the letter of all the Old Testament laws, and when He died He fulfilled all the sacrificial laws. That's why no one brings an animal to be slaughtered on an altar today. 

This New Covenant supersedes the Old, making the Old obsolete. This New Covenant is the one prophesied, that God's Law would be in our hearts instead of on tablets or parchment. So now we have the principle of Love to guide us. 

This principle is the agape love, in considering others over ourselves. Making whatever sacrifice that would benefit the one loved. This is the New Covenant, the New Testament, the New Contract God has made with us. 

We sign this contract when we realize that Jesus took our death upon Himself as our substitute, individually. Then God puts His own Spirit into our spirit which was born dead because of sin while our body and soul lived, and it comes alive. That's why Jesus called it being "born again," or "born from above" (John 3:3). Our spirit needs to be alive to communicate with God. 

That's why, 

V. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he that does not believe is already condemned, because he does not believe in the only Son of God. 

We all inherit the DNA of Adam's sin, so we're all born spiritually dead. That means that we're born condemned, and need that sin removed to be free of it. 

V. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the World, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 

Their deeds were not in accord with the Love we are to love each other with. And they know that they are wrong, so they want to stay in the darkness, to hide their sins. 

We all have those parts of ourselves we'd rather not show the World, that we're not proud of, that we're ashamed of and regret. This is wanting to stay in the darkness. 

But to heal those wounds we need to shine the sunlight of Truth on them to clean them out so they can heal (I John 1:9; James 5:16). 

O my Father, thank You so much for Your great Love! Thank You for loving me with Your unlimited, expansive, all-encompassing Love! You have known me, and You have already taken care of all my faults and defects and depravities. You have cleansed me in the Blood of the Lamb to make me pristine as though I had never sinned, and caused me to be born into Your own Family, making me Your daughter, Your princess. 

Now I pray that You help me to hear and listen to Your voice in my spirit, leading me in Your paths of righteousness, not turning to the right or to the left. Entering in to that strait gate that leads into the narrow path, hedged in on both sides. 

Show me how to put a guard on my heart, my mind, and my tongue. Teach me to think Your thoughts, reason with Your pure logic, and express to others Your ways in all that I do and say. 

I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul rejoice! 

You are my everything. I rejoice in Your blessings, in the bounty You placed in the Earth for our benefit, and in Your faithful promises of what You have planned for me in the future, both in this World and in the next.

And I enjoy Your presence with me every day, walking hand in hand with me and carrying the weight of every load. And Your sweet embrace when I feel alone. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

We Are Sheep

Isaiah 53: 6

All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.

Just like sheep follow each other, even over a cliff, or stray from the flock getting lost; we will decide that we know better than God, and follow other people's ideas and ways, or otherwise turn away from God. We are our own gods. 

But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

Jesus came to be our sacrificial Lamb, fulfilling the personal sacrifice each person was to bring first, as described in the first chapter in the book of Leviticus. He died for each of us individually to save us, one by one. 

He also fulfilled the other sacrifices, including the corporate sacrifice, for the whole Nation. This purchased for Him all of the Universe, as He shed God's own Blood, that has unlimited value and power. So we are all His property, making Him our Judge. 

God has always saved people one by one. He chose one Nation to give them His Law, so that when they obeyed Him and lived according to His ways, they would prosper, and other Nations would see and want to know this Lord God, also. 

And when they brought their own lamb or goat or calf to the priest for themselves, they laid their hand on the head of the animal, identifying with it. Then the priest slaughtered it, dying instead of the person, and sacrificed it on the altar, splashing its blood on the sides of the altar to cover his sins. 

Jesus is the Lamb of God, Who is our personal sacrifice, taking our place in death, one by one, and His Blood splashed on the sides of His altar, the Cross, does not just cover, but actually takes away our sins. The Blood of God washes away the crimson and scarlet stains of sin, cleansing us completely to make us as white as snow, as white as wool (Isaiah 1:18). That's why He came. 

That's how much God loves us. God is Love (I John 4:8), and He puts His Love into us when we let Jesus be our Lamb to die for us, as our substitute in death; then He puts His Life in us, His Holy Spirit, to make us alive spiritually. 

Jesus came to be with us where we live, so that He could make us suitable and fit to be able to live with Him where He is (John 17:24). This has been God's plan from the beginning, from before He created Mankind. 

And God is rolling out everything He planned, as He planned it to go, through the march of Time. He has told us in His Word the complete story of the Epoch of Mankind, from before the beginning to after the end (from Genesis to Revelation). The whole Bible is this one Story, His Story (history). 

Open our eyes, O Lord, to see Your message to us, Your Love-Letter to us, so that we will know You and follow Your ways to cooperate with how You designed all Creation to operate in obeying Your rules. 

And open our hearts, O Lord, to receive this wonderful Love You have for us. Help us to love You back and to love others with this Love of Yours. 

Help Your people, Lord, to love one another with Your Love, so that the World will know that Jesus came; and find all the lost sheep that have strayed from His fold, that there will be one fold and one Shepherd. Unite us as one, Father, so that we will be one in the fundamentals of the faith, and all of our differences would be secondary. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.


(Tune in tomorrow to read about this Love--it may not be what you think.)

God's Goodness

II Samuel 7: 18

Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and he said, "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that You have brought me this far?"

David was his father's baby, the youngest of all his brothers. And he was the shepherd of his dad's sheep, a very lowly position.

But God had taken him from the sheep, made him a valiant warrior, and anointed him to be the king.

Now God just told him that his dynasty, his family line, would continue forever!

David is astounded that God would bless him so much, even into the far distant future!

And I am also astounded with His goodness to me, too, who is also nothing. I was a liar, a thief, an adulteress, an idolater, I was self-righteous, proud, and a host of other negative traits. Why God would choose me to be in His own Family, I will never know in this life. 

That's why I am so thankful! I have been forgiven so much! 

Thank You, Father, so much for choosing me to be born into Your Family! Thank You for giving me Your Holy Spirit into my spirit to give it life. Thank You for loving me and leading me in studying Your Word, to connect so many dots.

Your Word is the whole story of our epoch in time, from the very beginning to the very end, and hints of what will come after. History is Your story of Mankind's time. Thank You for telling us all about it.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!