Philippians 3:8

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭3:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬


Having an understanding of Christ is more important than anything else in this life. In the word Christ states how if you've seen Him you've seen the father, so by discovering who Christ is we can discover who God is, and better understand both His character and His plan for our lives. By understanding God we can come to know all things about this world and how we are supposed to live in this world. And a lot of the time, the way in which God wants us to live isn't the way we are really living. There are things in our life that are holding us back from Him and distort what His true character really is. God designed us to live in joyous friendship with him, and if we have things in our life that are getting in the way of our friendship with him, then we have to throw those things out of our lives. Although not all of those things that we are sacrificing may be sinful, they may be weights in our lives that are holding us back from Him, and anything that keeps us away from God is something that we shouldn't tolerate. There is something that I've been dealing with here at Ignite that although is a good thing can at times keep me away from God. Usually it doesn't. Usually it draws me closer towards him and gives me more reasons to love Him. However, this thing that God has given me can be distracting and can get in the way of me truly living for Him, and has even at times torn me away from him. And so God has asked that I give it up for my time being here. He wants me to learn how I can truly live for Him without that gift so that when that when He gives me that gift back I will have a better understanding of how to live for Him and how I can live for Him with this gift as a part of my life. Unfortunately for me I received this gift from God before I was truly able to understand how He wanted me to care for it. So although it may be painful to have to give the gift back to Him because I wasn't ready for it, I know that He will give it back to me when I am ready, and I can't wait to see how great of a steward he will have turned me into. I'm going to write rubbish on my hand so that whenever I start to think of what I used to have before I came here, I can reread this verse and remember that what I will have will be unbelievably greater than what I did have.

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