building a foundation on Christ

It is becoming more apparent to me with each passing day how important it is that I am radically obedient to doing anything that God asks me to do. The foundation of radical obedience is intimacy with God. As our guest speaker shared today, we must be like Paul and “consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ,” (Philippians 3:8).

We are too quick to drop our commitment to Jesus when things don’t go as easy as we would like. Being unfaithful to my wife even once would be unthinkable, yet we can be unfaithful to Christ daily without worrying about it. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead,” (Philippians 3:10-11).

It was making me sick to think of all the times that I do things that I don’t even consider important instead of spending that same time knowing Jesus. I can’t start with the the good things that are not God things, I need to start with the foolish things like reading about cell phones that I will never buy. To be honest, I don’t know why I waste my time reading about different things, because I know that in the end I would give it up in a heart beat.

Furthermore, I must think of how to steward financial resources in the same way that I must steward my time. I must be faithful with the little if I want to be entrusted with much. That is in the bible. It is so amazing that God will give us opportunities to redeem our faithfulness when we have in the past been unfaithful. However, it may even be more incredible that He doesn’t give us constant opportunities when we are looking failure in the face. He isn’t going to set us up for recurring failure, so He waits until we are ready to handle the task He will bring.

God is so good. He is building a strong foundation in me so that when He gives me a command I will be ready to obey it fully and see His army advance. His heart is to promote us when we are ready to receive direction from the Commander. But, a General must be willing to do whatever the Commander says and that kind of obedience will only come from a deep trust that is birthed in relationship.