“Leap of Faith: From Curiosity to Discovery“, by Rev. Mike Holly
Have you ever encountered someone who was very confident in his or her accomplishments? There’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch from NBC where a family of three is having a very quiet and pleasant meal together in their suburban home when a tremendous fight breaks out over dinner. Everyone is shouting and suddenly the father begins to shout at the top of his lungs: “I am a division manager! That is very important!” They resume a now tense, but still quiet dinner until again another shouting match erupts. Everyone begins shouting again and the father begins yelling yet again: “I am a division manager in charge of twenty-nine people! I drive a Dodge Stratus!”
It’s one thing to be thankful for the ways in which we have been helpful and useful with the skills God has given to us. It is certainly another thing when we begin to boast about our accolades in order to lift ourselves up over others. In today’s Scripture reading, Paul mentions the gains that he could use to boast in front of others. However, he counts all of those gains as nothing compared to the gift of Jesus Christ. The righteousness that God offers to us is worth striving towards as Paul describes. It is worth giving up all of those other things that the world claims is important and focusing instead on what is the best thing ever offered to us all. During this season of Lent, let us all press on towards the goal together!
~Mike Holly
The Word
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speak Your Mind