Philippians 3 Revisited

A little over three years ago, I started this blog. My first post was mainly an essay that was part of the application process to JBU. You can read it here if you want. I had originally written that essay on September 19^th of 2008. I was just starting my senior year of high school. My, but that does seem like a long time ago!

What I didn’t say then because I wasn’t really willing to admit it is that I had tried to write the essay the night before. I clearly remember sitting there reflecting on what a relationship with God should look like and realizing that mine did not at all look like I wanted it to. This was one of the nights I talked about in a recent post. But that time I turned to Philippians, with 3:10 ringing in my ears. Reading through it that night framed my essay the next day.

Back to the present – God’s brought me a long way since that night, and JBU has definitely been a piece of that transformation. This month I’ve been chewing through Philippians again, in small bite-sized chunks. I’ve decided Philippians 3 is probably my favorite chapter in the whole Bible (although I like John 17 a lot too!), and I think 3:10 and the section around it is basically my life verse/s. So tonight I just wanted to share some of what I wrote down the other morning as I was reading Philippians 3 after spending a few days in it.

“This chapter is like a definition of the Christian life,” I wrote.

• · Don’t strive for fleshly/earthly things
• · Count all earthly stuff a loss for Christ
• · Seek to grow in Christ’s righteousness, not your own
• · Most important of all is knowing Christ!
• · Keep pressing on toward Christ! In a way, forget everything that it past – failures and accomplishments
• · We do NOT do this {life} alone – we are to do it with other like-minded people
• · We are citizens of heaven, not of earth. We await the coming of our Savior and the renewal of our bodies.

Hmm….looking at that list it almost looks like it forms a chiasm of sorts. Haha, Dr. Blankenship would be proud of me ;-)

But seriously – if you haven’t read Philippians recently I would definitely suggest chapter 3. Don’t you think it sums everything up pretty well? I’d also certainly advise taking little bits at a time rather than trying to gulp it down. I don’t think reading through the Bible in a year is a bad thing (I just did it in 2011!), but I personally think it’s better to take more time to look into passages more deeply. I know that I “get” a lot more out of my Bible reading time when I do smaller sections rather than a large chunk.