My name’s Will from New Zealand and I’m an entrepreneur, husband, father and follower of Jesus. I own a company called Orchid that makes cool software, websites and apps for businesses and individuals.
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Daddy, Can You Please Play Trains With Me?
No, sorry Archie, I’m busy cleaning this place up.
What a lousy response! He wasn’t asking me to play trains with him all afternoon long, but at that moment a clean house was more important than spending time with my little boy.
While I sit here and regret my response, he’s fast asleep now and has probably long forgotten me rejecting his offer.
But it scares me to think over this… one day this little boy will be all grown up, and the offer to play trains with him will be long gone. I’ll probably be sitting in a clean house, wishing like anything I was back in this messy house playing with my kids.
So a note to self, next time my kids ask me to play with them… play with them you idiot!
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Philippians 3:7-14 (Amplified Bible)
If any Bible translation captures the spirit of this passage the best, it has to be the Amplified version;
But whatever former things I had that might have been gains to me, I have come to consider as [one combined] loss for Christ’s sake.
Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]. For His sake I have lost everything and consider it all to be mere rubbish (refuse, dregs), in order that I may win (gain) Christ (the Anointed One),
And that I may [actually] be found and known as in Him, not having any [self-achieved] righteousness that can be called my own, based on my obedience to the Law’s demands (ritualistic uprightness and supposed right standing with God thus acquired), but possessing that [genuine righteousness] which comes through faith in Christ (the Anointed One), the [truly] right standing with God, which comes from God by [saving] faith.
[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope]
That if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body]. Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own. I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.
- Philippians 3:7-14
Anytime I’m feeling a little unmotivated I get out my Amplified Bible and read through Philippians.
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Truly Desiring God
There is a story of a man who, in search of God, came to study at the feet of an old teacher. The sage brought this young man to a lake and led him out into the shoulder-deep water. Putting his hands upon his pupil’s head, he promptly pushed him under the water and continued to hold him there until the disciple, feeling he would surely drown, frantically repelled the old man’s resistance. In shock and confusion the young man resurfaced. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. His teacher looked him in the eyes and said, “When you desire God as you desired air, you shall find Him.” – Francis Frangipane