I would like you to think of the most important thing in your life right now. I don’t know what it is. I’m sure it’ll be different things for different people. I want you to take a minute right now and think about what it is.
Got something? Okay, now think about this. Think about how you’d feel if you lost that thing. Think about how you’d feel if that thing that’s most important in your life was somehow taken away from you right now.
How would you feel? Pretty bad, probably. In fact, most likely “bad” does not really cover it. That would be about the worst feeling we could have, to lose the thing that’s most important to us in our entire lives.
Now listen again to what Paul says. “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.”
What Paul is saying there is that no matter what else happens, no matter what else we may have in our lives, nothing is or ever can be more important than our faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing is or ever can be more important than having the Holy Spirit in our hearts and in our lives. That’s not to say other things are unimportant, necessarily, but they all pale in comparison to knowing that Jesus is our Lord. Paul says that if he had to give up everything else in his life, it would be worth it. In fact, he says that all of that other stuff is just trash compared to the eternal life we can receive by God’s grace and mercy through our faith in Jesus.
Now, we hear that, and we tend to nod our heads in agreement. I suspect that, if we were asked, most of us would say the same thing Paul does: that we’d be willing to give up everything in exchange for the life we are promised in Jesus.
The thing is, though, do we really live our lives that way? Do we live our lives in a way that shows that the number one thing, the most important thing in our lives, is Jesus Christ? Or is our faith just one of the things that’s going on in our lives, something that’s certainly important, but no more important than lots of other things we have going on.
I hope we’ll take these questions seriously. It’s really easy not to. It’s easy for us to say, well, of course I know that Jesus is the most important thin. Of course I’d give up everything for my faith.
It’s easy to say, but it’s not so easy to mean. That’s why I asked you to think about what the most important thing in your life is. Would you really give it up for your faith? What if the most important thing in your life is your health? What if the most important thing in your life is your kids, or your grandkids? Would you really be willing to give them up in exchange for knowing Jesus is Lord?
Now, you may be thinking that God would never ask you to do something like that, and you’re probably right. On the other hand, some of you probably remember the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, a son Abraham had waited years and years to have. God did not tell Abraham why he was supposed to do this; God just told him to do it. Abraham obeyed. He got everything ready for the sacrifice and was going to go through with it until, at the last moment, God told Abraham he did not have to do it. God tested Abraham to see if Abraham’s faith was strong enough to do what God wanted, no matter what it was, even when he did not understand it, even when it did not make any sense to him, even when it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. Abraham’s faith was strong enough to pass the test.
That’s the kind of faith God wants from each of us. A faith strong enough to do whatever it is God wants us to do, no matter what it is. Even when we don’t understand it. Even when it does not make any sense to us. Even when it’s the last thing in the world we want to do.
Is your faith that strong? Is mine?
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