Excellence of the Knowledge of Christ Jesus

Phil 3:10-14 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Pressing toward the Goal 12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Sharron, a lady in our church was teaching Wednesday night and I ended up having to run sound, so I was not down with the youth. But she was speaking on promises from God starting out in Galatians 3 something. But one of the scriptures that she brought up was Philippians 3:10-14. And this peaked my attention. Because it is starting out in verse 10, and my thought was what do I need to do to receive this… of which “that” is speaking of?

Trying to figure this out I went back a few verses and I went back to verse 7 and started reading from there. Really trying to grasp this, because verses 10-14 are great promises and results of something and what is this.

Phil 3:7-9 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 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  9 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;

To me these verses seemed to be confusing somewhat to me at first. Reading through it a few times to me it is the counting all things lost, it is the coming the end of ourselves realizing that according to the law we deserve death and that we are worthy of nothing but death and more. But because of Christ all things are our. This is the “Excellence of the Knowledge of Christ Jesus”.

I really do love that line “Excellence of the Knowledge of Christ Jesus”.

Is The Holy Spirit Alive And Well?

I was at my youth group tonight and we typically before starting the lesson spend like a minute or so quieting ourselves before the Lord, listening and meditating on Him.

How amazing it is to be in a room of youth between like 14 and 20 and everyone is silent with their eyes close (well I am assuming their eyes are closed I did not check) meditating upon the things of God and quieting themselves in his presence. It is truly precious and I do cherish those times.

But now to get to my point. As I was saying tonight I was meditating and just praying to God silently really just thinking it. God you are here… actually now that I think about it I quieted myself after a nice long day at work as well as everything else that day and God spoke that to me. The Holy Spirit whispered I am here always just be silent and you will feel me. And I did feel him. It is so awesome to feel the spirit and to really know that He is there.

And it was brought to my remembrance how when my youth pastor was teaching like 1st and 2nd graders about the silent prayer and after the timer went off (because they where going for something like 5 minutes) He would ask the kids if they could feel the Holy spirit and they would all shake their heads yes and tell him about it. It is sooo precious!

I love silent prayer, it reminds one of all that is truly important, Jesus. It brings things back into focus sooo quickly. awwww