Loss can be gain

Aging and loss seem to go together. Our aging friends die. Our faculties waver at best and some vanish. We lose our keys, glasses, and other possessions. Memory falters and we even lose interest in activities that we once enjoyed. This morning’s devotional takes a look at the opposites — three things that cannot be lost.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Some think faith is the most important on this list. Hebrews 11:6 says that “without faith it is impossible to please God” yet love is greater.

Hope sits in the middle yet I wonder why it is on the list, for in eternity with Christ, all hope will be fulfilled. Yet  hope means expectation and with that definition, heaven will be a place of continual delight, including expectations and their fulfillment.

The third item is love. This verse says it will abide or remain and that it is the greatest item on the list. This love is “agape” and means benevolent and sacrificial actions for the good of others.

1 Corinthians 13 gives some examples. This kind of love is not mere talk, but action. It comes from the heart of Jesus and is motivated by our faith in Him. Love is also energized by a hope for positive things, a looking forward to the future and forgetting about the past. Love is also caring about others to the point of being willing to die for them.

Earlier, the chapter says that faith can move mountains, but without love, moving mountains is nothing. It also makes clear that if love is not in everything I do, my life is nothing.

Before reading this, I’ve thought about what would be left when I die. I can make sure my stuff goes to people who need it, but will I leave behind any of the qualities describing love — patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, a good temper, and a sincerity that keeps no record of wrongs?

The devotional writer points out that each description about love is in relation to people and life. That is, love applies to what is known today rather that what will happen in the unknowns of eternity. While the Bible says love will abide or last forever, God did not intend that it be kept in my pocket until that day when I arrive there. Just as eternal life is a present possession for those who know and have Christ in our lives, so is love intended to be lived out here and now, not just a possession for a far off future.

The devotional says, “Lavish (love) on the poor, where it is very easy; especially on the rich, who often need it most; most of all on our equals, for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to please and giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure.”

 

These are convicting thoughts. I rate myself as stingy with love. I can be impatient and thoughtless, selfish and carry grudges. Love does not do these things. Losing stuff and my faculties is nothing compared to the need to lose these sinful attitudes — and then let the Holy Spirit fill the empty spaces with the love of God. 

Moses, the Party-pooper

Moses brings to mind a man standing on a mountain with clay tablets in his hands. He cries out to his people to follow God. If anyone knows the story, they know that most of the time, the people did not do what he said.

Moses did lead the people out of slavery in Egypt, but many of them needed convincing, and after they made their escape from Pharaoh’s clutches, they often criticized Moses and wanted to go back to Egypt. During his life, he was not the beloved leader the nation later put on a pedestal. Why did he do it? He could have stayed in Egypt and became a leader there. He had been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and historians say that her father tried to formally adopt him and make him the heir to his position. However, historians also say that Moses even, as a child, threw the diadem on the ground. As the Bible says, Moses trusted God.

By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward. (Hebrews 11:24-26)

Faith in the King of kings comes with a value system that the world does not understand. Most would say turning down that position and privilege was a foolish choice. He could have had power and wealth and could have made a great name for himself. But Moses “balanced the best of the world with the worst of religion” and deliberately chose suffering rather than sin.

This is not to say being a wealthy king is sinful. David was called a “man after God’s own heart” and he had money and a throne. The sin is in the motive. Moses had a choice. He could identify with the family who saved his life by hiding him in the bull rushes as a baby, or with the family who forced his birth family and their relatives into slavery. God asked him to pick one and he did.

Every day I am offered choices. I think of Moses and need to weigh my options. My activities are generally not in the category of sin, but if God asks me to do something that is difficult or will mean personal sacrifice, and I have more pleasant things I could do, then choosing what is easy and comfortable rather than obeying God becomes a sin.

Identifying with Jesus Christ is a great treasure. It might not look like it in this life, much less feel like it, but the rewards of following Jesus instead of doing my own thing are eternal rewards. Besides, here and now I have the people of God as my companions. Together we share in the struggle of obedience, often without seeing immediate results. Yet together we know that God is with us and will take care of us. We encourage one another.

Those who choose the pleasures of sin may feel like they are “partying with their friends” but the day will come when their lives will be evaluated. All that does not pass the test of God’s refining fire will be lost. The pleasure will be gone, the party over.

Faith’s eternal perspective might make life seem joyless, but God even takes care of that. There is joy in choosing Him over personal pleasure or personal gain and the joy He gives does not depend on riches, power, or even personal comfort. It is a joy that bubbles up from the inside and overrules whatever might threaten it on the outside.

Moses knew the secret. His following gave him a rough time, but he choose to obey God. Eventually this man became revered in the eye’s of God’s people and in our eyes too, because he said no to sin and yes to God.

Lose it or use it

Loss means different things to different people. Last night within walking distance of where I live, several homes burned to the ground. Owners also lost their vehicles and other nearby houses were damaged. Loss of things.

A girl who lived in a town north of here was murdered a few weeks ago. Her family lost their daughter. Last weekend, several traffic accidents took the lives of several people; more families are grieving over loss of loved ones.

Every day we are hearing of people who have suffered great losses in the stock market, sometimes millions of dollars. My own RRSPs are not looking good either. While I’m glad that God’s care is my security, financial loss is huge for thousands of people.

This morning’s newspaper tells of the failure of a new study that hoped make improvements for Alzheimer patients. My mother, when diagnosed with this dementia, was at first angry. After a few hours, she calmed down and said, “I’ve lived a good life. There are lots worse things that could happen to me than losing my memory.” Daily, people like her suffer that same loss.

I’ve lost everything from clothes pins to car keys, but found them again. Some losses are not permanent, but many are. Some losses are even a choice. My devotional verses today are about making that choice.

The Apostle Paul was once a zealous Pharisee, a legalistic fundamentalist of the Jewish faith. He belonged to one of the elite and loyal tribes of Israel and was zealous about the righteousness. However, God saw in him something else. He was a proud man who did not understand true righteousness. When confronted on his way to kill Christians, Paul’s heart was laid bare and he realized that he was lost and needed salvation found only through faith in Jesus Christ.

In Philippians 3, Paul writes of those things that he once thought were valuable to him and his reputation as a worshiper of the true God. He said that they were “gain” to him, but now he considered them “loss for Christ.” He used accounting terminology to describe the spiritual transaction that had taken place. He had taken his Jewish religious credentials from the profit column of his life and moved them to the debit side. Verses 8-10 say:

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 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death . . . .

When I read this, I think of all the things in my life that tend to make me proud, or that I tend to rely on. I know that God is asking me to move them to the other side of the ledger, to suffer the loss, just as Paul did. At first I am reluctant, but am more willing as I realize the loss is for my good and His glory. In these verses, I also see that the loss of my “credentials” (religious or otherwise) makes way for a gain.

The gain is knowing Christ. Hanging on to prideful things, like my own abilities or skills, stand in the way from relying on the gifts and strengths that He supplies. Hanging on to what I think keeps me from knowing His mind on things. I don’t need to be a rocket scientist or a topnotch theologian to see the value of moving my stuff to the other side of the ledger.

This also has another side to it that I never thought about until this morning. The saying, “Use it or lose it” is true, but in the case of doing my own thing, the opposite is also true. If I don’t deny myself and consider my way inferior compared to the ways of the Lord, then I will rely on my own way. Instead of using the excellence that Christ supplies, I will be using the rubbish that comes out of my own pride.

This seems a no-brainer, but the matter is not decided by my understanding or perception. It isn’t even settled by an emotional act of my will. It is by grace that Jesus saves me, and keeping the columns of my ledger in the correct order certainly must also be by grace.