My mind, my goal, my strength, my life

Paul tells the reader in Philippians that he counts all things in his life “loss” or “dung” outside of pursuing “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” He says his all-consuming desire is “that I may win Christ, and be found in him.” In Philippians 3:10, he writes, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”

Jordan says, “When Paul wrote that he’d been saved at least 35 years. He says, ‘I just want to know Him more.’ You know that word intimacy—‘In to me, see.’ I want to know Him; He’s my goal. Before he says, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ ‘He’s going to be my mind, my goal, my strength, my life.’ It’s what J.C. Baxter called a 'Christ-intoxicated life.' And when you 'press toward the mark,' that’s what you’re pressing toward.

“I love Philippians 3:12: ‘Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’

“Now, if the Apostle Paul could say that, what do you think we ought to say? ‘I’ve arrived; I am somebody!’? Paul says, ‘Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.’ There’s an old saying I used to hear Down South: ‘The closer you get to the light, the better you see the dirt.’ If you want to see how dirty your finger nails are, get under a good bright light.

“The closer you get to the Lord, the less you’ll think of yourself and the more you’ll see your own inadequacies. I’m convinced, after being saved over 50 years, that the only real thing you ever really genuinely learn in the Christian life and grow in is, ‘It’s not I, it’s Christ.’ Isn’t that how you got saved?

“People hear the gospel and you say, ‘Why aren’t you saved?’ and the reason is because they still think they can do it. You never get saved ’til you get lost. Until you know you’re a hell-bound, hell-deserving, lost, helpless, bankrupt sinner, you’re never going to get saved.

“Preachers say, ‘Go out and tell people God’s got a great plan for their life,’ and a man says back, ‘God must be pretty smart; I’ve got a plan for my life, too!’ You say, ‘God loves you!’ and they say back, ‘Well, I love me, too!’ You don’t get saved until you get lost, when you can’t do anything and it’s, ‘Either you help me or I perish.’ That’s when you trust Christ exclusively.

“Paul says he’s ‘apprehended of Christ Jesus.’ I love that. Have you ever been apprehended, where the cop stops and arrests you? Paul, Saul of Tarsus, is going on the Road to Damascus, breathing out threatenings--he’s got letters, he’s going to go capture people, put them in jail and torment them. Men and women, an equal opportunity abuser. And injurious person, persecuting. And the Lord says, ‘Saul, Saul,’ and he knew who the God of the Bible was. He was a rabbinical scholar, trained in the best seminary, sat at the feet of Gamaliel.

“I’ve had the opportunity in the last few years to meet with some Jewish rabbis at the Chicago Temple. There’s a young man with two Phd degrees in the Old Testament and I sat and talked with him about the Hebrew Bible and the gospel. The guy knows more about Paul than most denominational preachers I’ve ever met. These rabbis think today that Gamaliel was one of their great scholars.

“So when the heavens opened up and God speaks to Paul, he knew instantly that that was Jehovah God. When Paul says, ‘Who art thou, Lord?’, in my heart I have to believe he’s thinking, ‘Please don’t say Jesus!’

“And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.’ By the way, Barnabus was Saul’s brother-in-law. Don’t you know he’d been to some nice family get-togethers. Paul said, ‘What would thou have me to do, Lord?’ He did just what any Jew was supposed to do. He confessed Jesus to be Lord. And he went right to, ‘What do I do now?’

“That encounter took a guy who was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against people and turned him into a guy who would write, ‘Love worketh no ill toward his neighbour’ . . . And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.’

“I think, ‘Woah, what is it that can transform this hateful, hating religious bigot, thinking he’s doing God’s service, into somebody who would write things like that?!’ 

"The only thing that can do that is the power of the Lord Jesus Christ; His life. What He did is He gave Paul a LIFE. He didn’t give Paul religion. He apprehended him. ‘In evil long I took delight until He stopped my wild career.’ That’s what happened to Paul.

"He writes in Galatians 1, [13] For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

[14] And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.
[15] But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,
[16] To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.

(new article tomorrow)