08-25-13 Three Attitudes That Bring Fulfillment

Phil. 3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

Phil. 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

Phil. 3:10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

Phil. 3:11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Phil. 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Phil. 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Phil. 3:15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you;

Phil. 3:16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

We are almost, but not quite ready

to leave this passage in Philippians 3,

not because we have even remotely

exhausted all it has to say to us,

but simply because I have decided

it would be good if we completed our study of this 4 chapter book

in under a decade.

If you’ve been around here in recent months

you know that I consider this passage

to be perhaps Paul’s premier presentation

of the life attitudes that work.

This is not Paul exhorting,

or Paul conveying content...facts...knowledge,

this is Paul opening his heart

and allowing us to see what’s there.

This is Paul illustrating for us

with his own life

the attitudes,

the priorities,

and the value system

that bring true fulfillment.

This is Paul sharing with us

what are truly reasonable expectations in life.

And his “reasonable expectations”

are thrilling beyond belief.

Do you know what this is?

This is Paul proclaiming to the world,

“No human being

who chooses to trust

the life and the leadership of Christ

will end up life saying, ‛I’ve been cheated!

I’ve missed out!

I got a raw deal!’”

And at nearly 66 years of age

I can wholeheartedly add my own absolute affirmation to that truth.

I’ve been on this planet long enough now

so that I have both seen and experienced

the long-range effects of the choices we make.

I know how profoundly both our life goals

and our priorities

impact the quality of life

and the level of satisfaction we experience.

And I know that everyone of us

faces a surprisingly simple

but sometimes very difficult choice

between two radically different paths in life.

On one side we have the clearly defined pattern for fulfillment

offered to us by our society.

We all know those things guaranteed to bring us happiness-

wealth,

popularity,

career success,

and the freedom to select any lifestyle we choose

without the restrictive interference of anyone else’s rules.

And of course our society tells us

that a major part of that freedom

includes a casual indifference to our relationships.

If one relationship no longer seems to be giving us what we want

or what we think we deserve,

we can just set it aside and replace it with another.

And then, on the other side,

there is the voice of our God

offering a very different path to life.

It begins with an uncompromising submission to Him as our God

and a fierce determination to understand and follow

the leadership of His spirit in our life.

And then it involves a life

that is built upon the understanding

that righteousness is the doorway to true freedom,

and that there never can be true freedom of spirit

without true moral purity.

And then, finally, there is His radically different approach to our relationships in life,

an approach in which we aggressively seek to understand

how to love those our God gives us,

showing them faithfulness, and kindness, and goodness

not because we always feel it,

or because we think they have earned it or deserve it,

but because it is literally our sacred calling given to us by our God.

I’ve seen over and over again

the results of those two radically different approaches to life.

And I will simply say

that our God never lies to us,

never cheats us,

and never ever withholds any good thing

from those who trust Him and His voice.

And of course our King said this a whole lot better than I just did...

Mat 6:32 "For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

Mat 6:33 "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

In fact,

not only does our Lord deliver on His promise that,

“John 10:10 "...(He) came that (we) may have life, and have it abundantly”,

but, when Paul begins this passage

he tells us that it wasn’t even a close contest.

He says

when he looks at all he could have owned

and achieved

outside of Christ,

and sets that next to all he has gained through Christ,

the life he could have known apart from his Lord

looks like a little pile of dung by comparison.

The problem we run into, of course,

and the one Paul is attempting to help us with in this passage,

is that, rather than choosing one or the other,

most of us attempt to mix the two.

We want to use God

to help us succeed by this world’s standards.

Well, that may sound a little brutal.

Maybe it would be better to say

we cling to the hope that we can

be really good Christians

while enjoying the really good life as defined by our culture.

And throughout this passage

Paul responds to that mentality

by illustrating for us with his own life

the assurance that “the really good life” we long for

can and will be found only in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we are far enough along in this study

so you know by now

that Paul is not saying, “start your day with morning devotions

and your life will go better.”

We saw last week

that he is calling us to an approach to life

in which we choose to share

everything that enters our life

with our Lord.

True satisfaction in life

is not the result of what is happening

to us,

or around us,

or in us,

but rather true satisfaction in life

is the result of what’s happening

between us and our Lord.

Then, in this passage,

Paul names some of those things

that happen.

He talks about his growth in knowing God-

not just knowing about Him,

but knowing Him, more and more.

Would you like help in knowing the difference between the two?

We can sit in a class on Theology,

or we can sit in church,

studying the basic Biblical doctrines about God,

and we can learn that

one of the attributes of God

is that He is Omnipresent.

That means that He is everywhere,

all the time.

That’s a nice doctrine.

That’s a little piece of intellectual knowledge about God

that we can memorize

and write down in the essay question asking us to describe the attributes of God.

But that is not what Paul is talking about

when he says in this passage in Philippians,

“that I may know Him.”

That kind of knowledge only comes

when Paul wakes up in his prison cell

in the dead of night,

not knowing whether he will live out the week,

and when he opens his eyes

and stares into the blackness

he can say, “Lord, thank you for being here with me now.

Thank you

for the presence of your Spirit,

and the awareness of your love,

and the security of your care for me.”

Should I bring it closer to home?

I remember so well

the intensity of Joni’s first year away from our home.

I remember waking up at 2:30 in the morning,

knowing that my daughter

was no longer tucked in her bed across the hall

the way she had been for 18 years,

knowing that she was sleeping on the top bunk

in a dorm room thousands of miles away.

And I remember, too,

how desperately I needed to be able to say,

“Lord, thank you for being with both of us right now.

Thank you that we both sleep this night

in the security of your presence

and your love.”

That’s the real doctrine of the omnipresence of God.

And to pull this passage together for us

into some sort of a final statement

I want to offer you what I see as the three major attitudes

Paul wants us to gain

from the example of his own life.

We’re going to look at the first two this morning,

and then come back and look at the third one next week.

#1. The first life attitude is summed up in that first phrase in verse 8:

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, ...

If I were to rephrase that first attitude for us

I would say simply, don’t be afraid to bet it all on knowing Him.

I have to be careful how I say this,

because the concept is vulnerable

to misunderstanding

and religious abuse,

but the first great truth

I see being illustrated through Paul’s life in this passage

is that one of the great keys

to Paul’s success in life

is that he never attempted to live in two worlds.

For him that meant that

once he turned to Christ

he did not attempt to continue to nurture and cultivate acceptance

and prominence

with the leadership of the nation of Israel.

That’s hard for us to identify with

because his culture and ours are so different.

For us, I think I would say it like this:

rather than attempting to use Christ

to achieve our goals,

we are called to let Christ

and His leadership in our life BE our goal.

So what?

Does that mean, then,

that we are suppose to stop everything we’re doing

and just read the Bible

and “Christian” books all day?

I have never found

an effective way of teaching an attitude,

and I’m going to run into the same problem again here,

but maybe some examples will help.

You’re in school. You’re a Christian.

If you attempt to use Christ

to achieve your goals,

you’ll do something like this -

you begin by looking around you

at whatever you think will make you popular or successful in that school society.

Maybe its sports,

or drama,

or music,

or student government,

or academic success.

Whatever it is,

you choose your means by which

you think you can achieve recognition.

Then you start praying,

“Lord please, let our team win,

let me be on the team,

let me get that part in the play,

let me get a 4.0 average.”

Or more likely,

you don’t pray at all.

You just choose your goal,

and pour your life into it,

and hope your Christianity doesn’t get in the way,

and if it does

you set it to the side just enough

so that you can do what you believe you need to do

to get to the goal you’ve set for yourself.

So then what?

Aren’t we suppose to try to win the game,

or try out for the play,

or do our best with our studies?

Absolutely!...IF it begins with an attitude that says this:

“Lord, whatever I do, I want to do it with You,

and because this is where You’ve put me.

Show me, Lord, where you want me,

and how You can be seen through me in the process.”

The same concept applies

whether you’re a student

or a construction worker,

or teacher,

or business man,

or health care worker,

or a mother for a pack of little ones.

What Paul is offering us here first of all

is the only attitude toward life

that really works for the Child of God.

It is the difference between beginning the day by saying,

“Lord, here’s my list...please bless it.”

and saying,

“Lord, here’s MY list,

but what I really want is YOURS.

Please, show me Yourself

and Your leadership this day.”

Now I didn’t say that near as well as I wanted,

and I’m not going to get stalled out

attempting to say it again,

but the one thing I want to say here is this:

those Christians who have placed their hand firmly in the hand of their Lord

and said to Him and to themselves,

“OK, Lord, we’re going to do this thing Your way,

I’m not sure what that is,

but I am sure it’s what I want,

You just show me how...”

those who have reached that place of peace with their God

have never looked back

and felt cheated.

Those Christians who have tried to pacify their God

while pursuing their own goals

find out that even if they achieve what they wanted

it has no power to satisfy their soul.

In the end they will find themselves grubbing through the meaningless rubble of their lives,

trying to convince themselves

and others

that there really was something of value

in the pile of rubble they hold in their hands.

Don’t be afraid to bet it all on knowing Him.

But there are two other major attitudes

offered to us in this passage as well.

2. The second one is found in verses 12-14 where Paul says,

Phil. 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Phil. 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

If I were to restate the attitude I see Paul offering us in those verses

I would say that trust in Christ is not a point, it’s a daily process.

We talk rather casually in the Christian world about “giving our life to Christ”.

We use the phrase as if it was something we could do once and for all.

“In the fall of 1966 I gave my life to Christ.”

The truth is, it can’t be done.

The only way I can trust Christ

is one day and one issue at a time.

In the fall of 1966 I did trust Christ with my sins.

He took them, made them His own,

paid my debt in full,

and made me His son.”

That was a once and for all transaction.

But every other area of trust I have encountered

has been and continues to be

a one-day-at-a-time issue.

And now, every day of my life,

I get up in the morning

and once again choose to go to war with my Lord.

Most people around me

never know I’m at war,

but they don’t need to.

It is the only attitude that makes any sense at all

in this life our King has invited us to share with Him.

Some of that warfare is inside myself,

some of it is warfare I fight on behalf of those around me.

But it’s always warfare

and it matters more than we will ever know.

Right now every one of us here

has something we’re brooding over,

something we can’t fix,

something we don’t know how to handle,

or cure,

or escape,

or correct.

This day we are faced with a choice -

do we share it with Him,

trust what He says about it,

follow His counsel and His leadership,

or do we hide it from Him,

and do it our way?

And, did you notice Paul’s comment

right in the middle of that passage

where he says,

“this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind...”?

He’s talking about both the failures

and the successes.

One of Satan’s greatest strategies

is to attempt to convince us that

who we were will determine

both who we are now

and who we will be in the future.

And in Christ it’s a lie!

Satan will say,

“Come now, lets look at your past.

See that failure there?

And there...and there.

Well, that’s who you are, my friend - you’re a failure,

because you have always failed in that area,

therefore you will always fail again.

The jury has returned,

the verdict has been read,

and you are a failure.

And look here at this fear that consumes you.

You have always lived in fear,

and obviously you always will.

And look at that history of

loneliness,

or anger,

or bitterness,

or addiction.

That defines who you are

and who you always will be.”

Our God, on the other hand,

tells us that, because of His presence in our life,

who we were WILL NOT determine

who we will become.

He specializes in healing the human spirit,

in restoring our soul,

in recreating our life into something very, very good.

“Something beautiful, something good,

All my confusion He understood,

All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife,

But He made something...something beautiful of my life.”

And Paul is talking about forgetting

the successes as well.

Not denying them,

but not allowing them to rob us

of the wealth He has yet to share with us.

When I was in college

I was asked to offer the closing prayer at a banquet for a men’s service organization

at which the organizers had invited 10 or 15 famous athletes from past years

to share their greatest moments.

I guess it was intended to be

a nice little piece of nostalgia,

but it turned out to be

one of the most painful

and pathetic things I had ever seen up to that point in my life -

a group of sad old men

still clinging to that one day 20 years ago when they made the goal,

or the touchdown,

or the basket that won the game,

and then spent the rest of their lives

trying to recapture the glory.

It doesn’t matter how old we are,

or what we may or may not have achieved in the past -

if we are still here,

if our Lord has chosen to keep us on this earth,

it’s because He still has a future

and a purpose for us,

and that is where our point of focus must be.

And at this point in my life

I want to add just one additional observation.

Our usefulness in this world

and our ability to change it for good

is not tied to our physical energy level,

or our health, or stamina, or physical appearance.

It’s tied directly to our ability to love the people our God has given us

and our determination to communicate that love to them

in ways they can receive.

And it is that ability to love

that gives us both power for change and true value in this world.

OK, that’s the first two of the three crucial attitudes

that I see Paul offering us in this passage.

There’s one more to go,

but rather than trying to rush through it this morning

I’m going to pick up right here next week

and look at that third gift Paul has for us.