What is Truly Important in Your Life?

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“…I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish…” Philippians 3:8

My life sometimes feels full of rubbish.  Or at least that is the way I felt yesterday after I had picked up yet another bucket of pieces of wire, rusty metal, and other materials left on my property by the former owner.  Every time I dig, cultivate or move any soil on my land, I collect more unwanted artifacts that my uncle has left behind.

Call it what you will; rubbish, trash, or garbage, there is plenty of it not only littering our land, but also littering our lives.  What seemed so important to have at one time in my life is now just excess baggage littering the landscape.  Saint Paul, in our text above, says this about all his hard earned accomplishments and awards he had gained, the praise of men and the pride of his life.  Paul says, “I consider them rubbish” in comparison “to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

What seems important in your life?  Do appearance and career and money and status and the like seem most important to you?  Does having your 10 minutes of fame and being someone important in your local sphere of influence rank high as what has value for you?  Honestly, are these things not just temporary baubles that will soon be nothing but discarded rubbish along the road of life?  What is it that is truly important in the scope of your life?  In the scope of eternity?

I am placing my energy, my time, my labor on “the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  To know Him is to have all things.  To know His mercy and love, the greatness of His forgiveness and peace, is to have all things.  To know His wisdom and His power, His sorrow and His joy, this is what is truly important.  For what is of Christ will never fade away.

Praise God that my Lord does not cast me off as an unwanted piece of rubbish, but loved me so much that He gave His life for me.  How can anything in this world rival that all redeeming love?

Dear Lord Jesus, you are all the world to me.  I consider all things as rubbish compared to knowing You and Your surpassing greatness.  Forgive me for forgetting what is truly important in my life.  You are my all in all. Amen.

Picture and Text Copyright Steve Nickodemus