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Paul gained Christ but how?

written by Michael McBane

I would like to glean today from the waters generated by Paul’s letter to Philippians. I will incorporate my walk and my families into portions of this letters purpose from my perspective. It is good to take the chapters of our experience, our triumphs and our failures and allow the Lord to weave them together with what He has spoken. This can be done through out our Christian life but there comes a time when it has a different fragrance, when it is spoken with a different tone.

When we come to a time and place that God has chosen, a place that has allowed us to digest the journey we have traveled with Him on, we then become a more palatable offering of broken bread to the greater body of Christ. We may not necessarily be what others agree upon but our indifference has retreated. It is an easier labor now, our strength is gone and we give out of Christ and out of what He has allowed to remain. His rest is now a foundational cornerstone. We are less identified by the influence of others and the spheres of life that we have been pressed through. We no longer need to become somebody or to find a place of strength in something. We live in the knowledge of God that He is no matter where we are. We influence from this perspective. We have a confidence to speak in love, how be it firmly or simply it is no longer defensive or demanding. Our life serves in who we are because Christ is alive as never before. Why, because we have resigned from striving to be and God has risen in us.

I often perhaps to often look back on my Christianity and ask have I gained Christ? Have I wasted my sorrows? Have I misunderstood grace and allowed it to approve my flesh? Have I neglected the hidden treasures within the words of the Gospels and the Letters? Have I turned from love and thus not loved? The answer, yes, yes, yes and yes. But still I am walking with God and I am washed in His blood and I walk in and into the reality of His life. Because He is resurrected and I am asked to sit with Him and begin to see life, be life from His perspective. The divine tensions of truth truly unravel us at times but it is because we must be unraveled to see Him.

I also consider the expressions of the church that I have been taken through on my journey. I at times share some of the various expressions and understandings I have touched and people are over loaded as most have either been contained in one or a few variables of Christian expression. Little variance has integrated into their spiritual well. I remember thinking in the beginning of our journey in Christianity before we traveled through some of the expressions contained in the greater church that no matter where we would go or who we might fellowship with if they love Jesus they will accept us and our fellowship will be formidable. I was befuddled in our discoveries. We were taken on an introduction into the greater church that was like driving on a road fast over speed bumps. It rattled us but we clearly had been given a fortitude formed by God’s grace. We really understood that our road was chosen by Christ and that He said follow me. So we had a grace that always allowed us to step forward with a certain amount of innocence and faith. We gleaned because at each well there was life and contention. At times we went through a school of hard knocks because there was really no other way to learn what we needed to learn. Some things came like an unsuspected slap across the head. Your left so stunned it takes a while to recover. The spiritual side of life is not easily apprehended in books. Discernment can be shown on the blueprints of wise instruction but there are times when the activation comes only when the heat is turned up.

We, my wife and I, have gone from our foundational expressions before our encounter with Christ in a Methodist expression, and a Catholic indoctrination. Both had been used by the Lord in our early youth to prepare us to step into the days that would lay before us.Then we began our journey in an inner city mission church which was a multi cultural expression formed in the days of the Jesus movement and continued in various church plants cultivated through the discipleship movement all of which were community minded, Four Square, Black Pentecostal, various Charismatic expressions, Vineyard, and Prophetic and worship and prayer expressions as varied as the leader who sat before us. We worked with some Mennonite expressions and again saw life from a different place. And we have been schooled in the integrity of some evangelical expressions and the firmness of particular Baptist teaching that enlarged our understanding. I have surely missed some here but I want to give an over view. It has been an adventure at times. We think it has been a privilege. We do not forget the people we have met, God gave us a love for so many. We still have that deposit even if some relationships brought sorrows. We have broken bread with the lowly and the perceived mighty. All carried treasures from the heart of God.

We were graced to not fear man but to carry an honor and respect for the Christ in those we were placed around. We walked with the heart to extend life relationally and did not hold some in an aloof posture. Our table welcomed all.

In almost our entire Christian walk we have been asked to serve in some leadership capacity and served the greater church. We have even to be blunt been sought out with bribes of Christian success with the persuasions of men. They came telling us to accept our greater potential by taking particular positions being offered and that we should see ministry as a stepping stone, the Lord clearly and firmly said we could not touch any such thing.

We have always expanded our household by inviting the single into our home to live or had other families join us. By taking in the young girl with child to give shelter practically and emotionally. Any of these expressions formed us and enlarged us to see the heart of God. Hospitality has offered us as much as we have offered others.We have had homes that we have shared with others, Inns and Bed and Breakfasts for the public and the Christian sojourner.

We have lost everything we owned more then once and been financially desolved as well. We have given out of need and have never been in want or need. Our perceptions of such have been challenged but we have found the reality of God in the circumference of who He is. We did not presume we walked in what we agreed as a married couple and a family unit that God had spoken to us. Even if it cost us. We have had Christians make promises to provide for the vision we carried and left us standing with vows that were broken. And God said, let it go I have something better. He was drawing us forward into His substance.

Because we allowed and agreed to let the Lord lead us we had a gift of faith that extended before us and spoke to us. We were then able to see the unseen possibility and the vision of the Lord through the laughter, joy and sorrow and pain.

I share this following piece to qualify what I am sharing. We had grown to have a vast network of ministry friends that we loved and exchanged life with. When we began to hear the Lord say particular things to us that did not fit into the status quo we over night lost almost all of our relationships, with no explanation. We were shunned and went on the do not call list. We did not do everything right, you react when you get stepped on and kicked. But God told us it would be all right it had to be this way. He was building something in us that only He knew how to build. Did it hurt you bet it did. But God was good and let us throw our sorrows about. But the scars go deeper then we would like to admit or think so the seasons ahead of us, the ones that seem to have brought even greater pain were for our good. Odd isn’t it? We have been convinced of this, there is a grace when God places us in particular relational scenarios and or places in specific seasons for His purposes.

I once many years ago woke with a picture in my heart. I saw myself covered with stones and bricks. The weight was extreme. I thought Lord what is this about. I somehow knew it was the church and the sorrows of our journey shown as stones and bricks that had either been thrown at us or fallen on us. God then pulled from deep within me these words. I still love the church. This was my spirit agreeing with the Lord. Strength and grace had been imparted. My vision was corrected, again. But this was not a license for me to point my finger but to align with the heart of Christ and to see as He sees and extend life and love in silence at times to what He would speak to us about.

There is no one that we know who would say they would have written the chapters of life as they have formed in the past decade or so. They have been peculiar to say the least. Some have suffered great sorrow and loss that seemed to continually tumble like an avalanche. Some departed like prodigals others were sustained by grace and hope after a great stripping of life had occurred. But there has been a resonating pulse that many have heard that allowed them to have a increasingly quite and courageous faith. In their spirit was a heart beat as if something was in a long gestation period that seemed to linger forever. So it is, that the heart of man makes his plans but it is God who brings them forth. 

For many vision has been delayed if not erased. False and presumptive understandings of God have been extracted at times like a bad tooth. What was God doing? Where were we going?

Some refused to die and engaged the continual motivation of ones who speak on behalf of God. Some do, some might and some simply build false hope over and over.

I learned that God is jealous over what He desires to bring forth. He guards us at times by extruding the vile from our hearts or keeping us from the dilution of a lesser call. But even here it is a choice, an agreement that we first desire to conform to His call and then to forfeit what may seem to be good for the unseen promise of Him alone. 

It seemed many were being called out and into a wilderness of purposed isolation that gathered little to reveal what they had know outwardly to be God. This was beyond the books about being in the wilderness, the books about how to be intimate with God. Those were the primers that prepared us on. The stumbling block is many mistook them for the truth of stepping into a vast unknown place that challenged everything they had known about God and who He was and had been to them. What was going on in the hearts of those who became so weak that they had to listen...differently? God was revealing His love one minute at a time and dismantling who we thought He was, where we had been and He was being very precise and deliberate. God our God who does not need a throne was washing the feet of those He had called out and said, Leave it all behind and follow ME. He was teaching an expression of life that was formed in heaven relationally not theoretically.

He had always asked this question to us. Do you really believe? As time came and went part two was added. What if there is nothing but My voice, nothing but what you have known and know Me to be, do you still believe?

I pray that you might see in my examples here a compatible thread with the words Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippian Christians? This is not meant to be a resume of where we have been but a vulnerable revealing of how we have gained Jesus Christ. Certainly not a shinning examples but pressing towards such. I compare only because these words of Paul’s brought formation to us as we walked. We at times felt as if we were stepping into them. They were a bar of encouragement. I will briefly transition to expound more directly concerning his letter.

We can continually find the example of how Paul related in his introductions. He  spoke often from a relational extension of he and others to the community of intent. He first addressed the saints collectively some times by name before he acknowledged the overseers.  He spoke of God as Father and Jesus Christ. He presented the Fatherhood of God by how he wrote his introduction. Paul gave no credence to a Nicolations spirit. 

He reaffirmed in them the work of Christ in and among them but also warned them that love had to have substance and should be discerned so they they would approve the things that are excellent. Was excellence defined by a world environment of corporate structure? Signs and wonders,? No, Paul said abound in real knowledge look for sincerity and those who walk broken and blamelessly before you. 

Paul did not have conflict with those who preached at times in contention with the gospel he lived and spoke of. In fact he saw that it caused him at times distress but his deliverance came in the community of faith, the prayers and provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ among them. Each day Paul saw dying as gain, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Did Paul will himself to die. I think that is mistaken. He revealed to us that even he who had first gone not to men but to the wilderness to learn Christ struggled in this life. He went from faith to faith, hope to hope and glory to glory none of which were him. He clung to Christ. He discounted who he was and allowed it no room to influence. Christ or nothing.

Paul pleaded with those of the church to console in love and walk in the purity of true fellowship found in the Holy Spirit. Propagate affection and compassion to each other discover the mind of Christ and cultivate it together. Expose your selfish heart and the conceit that depraves the body of life in Christ. Be not amused at your own interests do not let them distract you from the eternal perspective. Find joy in the Christ found in others.

In fact Paul was relentless in tackling the issues of self preservation. Be it in the individual or those who say they seek to serve the church but in reality serve themselves. He saw his repetitive words as a blessing to safeguard the heart of those he served. He was forceful with the heart of a father.

Paul was earnest as he put no confidence in his flesh. He embraced his weakness and allowed the fragrance of God to prevail. He truly saw the loss of all things as an opportunity, a value unsurpassed to know Jesus Christ. Saying I loose what this world has taught me to value and now my heart can receive the treasures of God in Christ. His mind was detached from the understanding that we as a world integrated church have fostered and sought to water as kingdom 101. Why did Jesu say pray that my kingdom would come? We act as if we have the solutions by offering high minded investment solutions for a fee. Seriously, this is the kingdom?

Paul wanted to be found in Jesus. He mourned that he might present self righteousness or expressions that were formed in his success. Was he extreme, perhaps but was he?

Here is the principal of this letter that forms Paul’s heart.

“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 in order that I may gain Christ, and 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.” Philippians 3: 8 and 9.

“Finally, brethren, what ever is true, what ever is honorable, what ever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things; and the God of peace shall be with you.” 4:8 and 9.

Why must we be so empty? If only to have the confidence of Paul and say practice the things I say and do.