Last night, during our corporate prayer time I was reflecting on my day and the Words I had studied and read that day in the Scriptures and the thought came to my mind, "have I been captured by the Gospel?" Like has this all loving, redeeming gospel of Jesus, taken over me. Then I got to thinking, what does the Gospel do when you are captured by it? I then started to think of one man, Paul, a man that was an enemy to the cross, opposing it and those who chose to follow it. He may have killed people, but in the end before we were saved, we were all enemies of that beautiful cross. And I started to think about what he stats in Phil. 3:3-11-where he makes such statements as,
v.7"but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ, indeed I count EVERYTHING as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." And again in v.10,"That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death."
Now these are some powerful statements from a man who once persecuted the church, now he is saying I will die for Him. That is the power of the gospel, it changes us, it so overwhelms us that it changes all of us. It penetrates the heart, mind, and soul, every part of our being, changing the very essence of who we used to be(an enemy of the cross), to those that would die if called.
This is why it is so dangerous to add anything to the gospel, any time you add something to the gospel, i.e. prosperity gospel, liberation gospel, social gospel, it ceases to be the gospel, because our center focus shifts for the Jesus of the Bible and onto our circumstances.
So today may we declare that He is all we want, no matter the circumstances, no matter how the picture looks, it times of great prosperity and in times of great lost, may we rise to echo the statements of Paul, it all is rubbish, the only thing that matters is knowing Him.
LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE
Brandon
