Getting Rid Of The Rubbish
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. – Philippians 3:7-11.
Today seems to be the day of the VIRUS or maybe it would be better stated VIRUSES. Out of a couple of hundred emails I received to begin the day, all but about 50 were infected with a virus thankfully deleted by my anti-virus program. Have you noticed how some days are like the incoming viruses we have faced today? So many days seem filled with small, meaningless and worthless tasks and events, which keep us from doing anything eternally worthwhile. Just when we think, we can do something or say something of eternal value the phone rings or someone knocks on the door. The flood of the urgent meaningless things continues to flood into our lives unabated.
What can we do about the flood of urgent virtually meaningless things, which can at times dominate our lives? What do you do with infected email viruses? Delete them! Avoid them! Block them! As Paul says, “count them as loss.” “Count them as rubbish.” We must be aggressive in our pursuit of those things of eternal value. If we just sit and wait for the labor of God to come to us, we will be covered up with the meaningless, worthless,“rubbish”, and as with Paul, we must not let that happen.
To overcome the “rubbish” we must rise up and move forward. It may be that we will have to move around, over, or through the “rubbish” but above all, we must not stand still being bogged down, and covered up until we are at a standstill. Rise up! Get up! Move forward! Do something! That we may “know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings….” Let us count all things loss of this world. Let us be looking for those things, and working for those things as co-laborers with Him that will have eternal value. Let us look for where He is at work and join Him in that labor. Please don’t let all the “rubbish” of this world keep you from the eternally vital work at hand.
(Overcoming the trash of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
Comment from old website: Thanks ever so much for this inspiring devotional message. It spoke so audibly to my heart and my prayer for all “who love the Lord & His appearing” is God help us catch the same vision Paul caught at his conversion so we too will regard all the things we have accumulated in our lives, things we thought were treasures as dungs or rubbish. May God by the power of the Holy Spirit activate the “antivirus” in built in our souls to delete those virus that will hinder us from being what and where God wants us to be so as to be our best for Him and mankind.I’m visiting this website for the first time and it’ll be one of my favorites sites. God bless you and your team. (From DEALYNGEORGE)