Disposing of liabilities

Last night I dreamed about something that I’d wanted years ago, but never possessed. I woke up wondering what my life would have been like had I obtained that one thing. When I came to my devotions this morning, it seemed God had used the dream to set me up!

The verses and the reading are about the sufficiency of Christ, and more personally, a challenge to me as to whether or not I value Him above all other things. Jesus said,

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)

He also compares the kingdom of heaven with a pearl of great price hidden in a field, a pearl which a merchant will sell all he has in order to obtain (verses 45-46). The idea of both descriptions is that His realm is hidden to most people, but when it is revealed to anyone, they are willing to give up all they have to possess it.

This is the stuff of a movie plot. It happens in life too. A person becomes obsessed with something they want and spend all their time, energy and resources trying to get it. For some, it might be an achievement, like climbing a mountain or getting into Fortune 500's list. For others, it might be a person who holds their fascination, or a certain car, or a villa in Italy. In their drive to possess whatever it might be, the driven person often loses everything else.

When it comes to having what Jesus talks about, the Bible is positive about the pursuit, not negative. The gain of knowing Christ is far greater than the value of anything it might cost those who seek Him.

I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)

Yet the stuff of this life only lasts for this life. His treasure is an eternal one. I know that and Paul did too. As my devotional reading reminds me, he lived a driven life before he became a Christian. He worked hard to keep all the laws and traditions of Judaism and to accomplish something he hoped would please God. However, he was seeking something he couldn’t find. He didn’t know it at the time because the treasure was hidden.

Then one day Paul was confronted by the living Christ and this zealous man realized that Jesus was everything he had been looking for. He describes the results:

What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:7–8).

Paul is using accounting terms. He clearly saw that everything in his asset column was actually a liability and that Christ was all he needed.

This is what God wants me to do also. Whether it is a new thing or something from the foggy past that I thought I’d forgotten, I need to decide where everything fits in my account books. As Paul decided, I too must consider those things that I might have once put in the asset column and place it in ‘liabilities’ where it belongs.