A Passion to Know Him--Life with God Series

            There are certain relationships in life that only thrive when you have a passion to get to know someone. I think a relationship with a good mentor is like that. When you find someone you really admire, someone that you want to be like, you have a strong drive to learn everything that you can from them. You want to be around them and learn how they think and ask them a million questions to learn why they do the things they do.

            Romantic relationships certainly belong in this category as well. In those early stages of a romance, could you even imagine having an attraction to someone and NOT having a passionate desire to get to know them? That wouldn’t even be an attraction anymore! And many couples can attest that romance grows cold when the passion to get to know each other fades away.

            Your relationship with God is certainly a relationship that is worthy of your greatest passion. The simple fact that we are relating to GOD calls for that kind of passion from us! You cannot let a closer bond with God slip on to that list of “things I’ll get around to someday.”

            We all have a list like that in our minds, don’t we? Maybe you’ve had a desire for years to remodel your kitchen, but when it was time to either make plans or set it aside, you said, “we’ll get around to that someday!” Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn how to play an instrument, but every time you’ve seen a used one for sale you’ve said, “Well, it’s just not the right time. I’ll get around to that someday!”

            Only God knows how many Christians have remained infants in their faith because they’ve said, “I’ll get around to knowing God better someday!” Maybe when things quiet down a little bit around work; maybe when the kids are out of diapers; maybe when the kids graduate; maybe when I retire.

            We all know that song and dance, don’t we? We sincerely have the best of intentions about prioritizing our relationship with God, but we wait for a time when we think it might be easier to do than right now, and that time just never comes! The key is that we must choose to prioritize our relationship with God above everything else. We must assess the things we value in life and choose to put our relationship with God at the very top.

            God Himself summed up this need very well through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 9:23-24. In these verses, the Lord considered a couple of things that we might be tempted to value highly, and then he reminded us of what we should prize more than anything else: “Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

In the rest of our time together today, I want to look with you at a little piece of autobiography from the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3. In this chapter, he describes for us how he came to value knowing God more than anything else.

Philippians 3:7-11

1. A change in Paul’s “personal accounting”

            In vv. 5-6, Paul described the accomplishments that he used to value before he became a believer in Christ. He had valued these things because he thought that they all added up to put him on very friendly terms with God. Let me quickly run through this resume that Paul provides:

·         Circumcised on the eighth day—This, of course, was required in the Law of Moses. It shows that Paul came from good stock—he had faithful parents.

·         Of the people of Israel—They were the ones who had heard from God through the prophets, and they had his promises.

·         Of the tribe of Benjamin—The Benjamites had faithfully served King David from the very beginning of his reign, so this carried some prestige.

·         A Hebrew of Hebrews—Even though Paul was not born in the land of Israel, his parents brought him up in the language and culture of his ancestors—unlike some other Jews who were leaving those things behind.

·         As to the law, a Pharisee—He was a member of the strictest sect of Judaism.

·         As to zeal, a persecutor of the church—He had tried to stamp out the Christian faith initially because he thought it was an insult to God.

·         As to righteousness under the law, blameless—No one could find fault with Paul by the standards of the law, because he kept it so faithfully.

            But after Paul met Jesus in that fateful encounter on the road to Damascus, he began to see all of these things in a different light [READ v. 7].

            Paul used some terminology here from the world of accounting, and he paints a word picture like this—he used to think of those things as being like deposits or credits in his spiritual bank account. He thought he had great spiritual health, then, and was firmly in God’s good graces because his spiritual bank account seemed so large. But after he met Christ, he realized that those things had been more like debits from his spiritual bank account. Just as financial debt can hold us back from important goals, Paul’s spiritual resume had been holding him back, blinding him to the truth that he needed to be saved from his sins by the Lord Jesus Christ.

            So Paul came to realize that the spiritual resume that had once given him such pride had actually been a barrier that kept him from coming to Christ. That experience taught him that he must not allow himself to value anything as much as he valued getting to know Jesus well.

2. Nothing compares to knowing Christ

            Notice in verse eight how Paul looks beyond his old spiritual resume to take stock of everything in his life [READ v.8a]. Now keep in mind here that Paul is making a comparison. We know from his writings that he certainly valued his friendships and he valued his possessions – even though they may have been meager – but compared to the value of knowing Jesus deeply – well, by that comparison, nothing else had much value at all! In fact, if any of those things would hold Paul back from knowing Jesus better, he understood that he would be suffering a great loss.

            This attitude sustained Paul through all of the real-life losses that he did suffer. He did lose friends for the sake of Jesus; he probably lost family members as well. He speaks of these losses as we continue in verse eight [READ v. 8b].

            This is a very interesting statement from Paul, and I think what he means is that whatever he lost for the sake of Christ, he doesn’t want it back if it means he would have to be unfaithful to Christ. When Paul converted, he lost significant fame and prestige among the Jewish people and perhaps even significant wealth, but in the same way that you no longer want the trash that you set out on your curb every week, Paul no longer wanted those things because he now had something so much better. He wanted nothing at all to keep him from knowing Jesus better and better.

            Paul then goes on to tell us his purposes for adopting this attitude [READ v. 9, beginning in v. 8 at “in order that”]. Paul never again wants to think that his spiritual life is like a resume of his own accomplishments. Even as he grew in Christ, he wanted to remember that all of that growth came simply by trusting in God. On his part, Paul could take no credit even for his spiritual maturity or the powerful ways that God used him. It all came about simply as he continued to obey God in faith.

            And then in verse 10, we read of how thoroughly Paul wanted to know Jesus – to understand the Lord’s thoughts and attitudes and motivations and strength [READ v. 10 through “resurrection”].

            When God raised Jesus from the dead, he did what was seemingly impossible, and in our lives today, that same power can still accomplish things that are seemingly impossible. God can empower us to forgive people who have hurt us no matter how deeply those wounds have cut. He can reconcile us with people about whom our world might say, “There’s no hope for their relationship! It’s too far gone.” But God can do it!

            God’s power can help us control our inner desires and urges that will dominate and destroy us if we give full expression to them. Our world thinks that we will be psychologically harmed if we don’t let our anger erupt somehow or if we say “no” to any lust that we might have, but that’s because our world does not understand the power of God!

            Paul wanted to know that resurrection power by experiencing it in his own life as it transformed him and put to death the sinful desires within him, truly giving him a new quality-of-life. And then Paul goes on to say something perhaps even more profound [READ v. 10 from “and may share”].

            We love all that talk about resurrection power, but talk of suffering is a harder pill to swallow! But if we want to understand Jesus thoroughly, we have to remember that as the Scripture says, he was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And he willingly embraced all of that, so if we are going to know him well, we have to learn why he was willing to endure those sufferings in obedience to God the Father, and we have to learn the attitudes that allowed him to remain faithful to the Father through it all.

            Paul describes some of those attitudes back in chapter 2 when he told the Philippians that it was great humility that led Jesus down the path toward the cross. He didn’t view his powers and position as God as things to be used simply for his own advantage, but he considered our needs and set out to meet them even though it required great humility and sacrifice from him.

            If we want to say that we know Jesus well, we have to come to understand why he so highly valued attitudes like humility and a willingness to sacrifice for the sake of others. And if we want to understand why he thought that way and why he lived that way, we will never understand it through a casual effort. We must embrace this passion that leads us to say everything else is loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

            If I achieve great success in this world but never get to know Jesus, I will have suffered a great loss. If I earn unimaginable wealth but never get to know Jesus, I will have suffered a great loss. Even if I simply piece together a nice life for myself with my wife and kids and a steady job and a gold watch when I retire but I never get to know Jesus, I will have suffered a great loss.

            My friends, you will never get to know Jesus well until you decide that that is the most valuable thing you could possibly pursue in your life. Understanding him requires you to become like him, and the sacrifices to do that are great enough that you will never do it unless you decide that it’s worth it. So decide today that everything else is like a loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus your Lord. Put that kind of passion in your relationship with him because that relationship will never grow without it!