Faultless

Faultless

Monday, June 13, 2016
Jeff Lampl

I learned a new word last week.

ex·urb:   ‘eksərb’ noun,  plural noun: exurbs

1.      a district outside a city, especially a prosperous area beyond the suburbs.

I think Southern Chester county is an exurb.  I live in the exurbs!  What a thought!  I live in prosperity and, comparatively speaking, so do you!   What’s not to like about that?   You and I have worked hard and we are reaping the fruits of our labor!

So too the Apostle Paul, who was a prosperous, worked-for-the-status-he-had, “ex-urbanite” of his day.   Here’s what he wrote about himself:

“when it comes to winning God’s approval by keeping Jewish laws,
            I was perfect.”     Philippians 3:6

Perfect!  A little immodest maybe, but the man worked hard, did life right, and was reaping the rewards of his labor.  No doubt about it, he earned his place in society and God was rewarding him!   Read More:

At least that’s what he wrote in verses 4- 6.

Here’s what he wrote next

“These things that I once considered valuable, I now consider worthless for Christ. 8  It's far more than that! I consider everything else worthless because I'm much better off knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. It's because of him that I think of everything as worthless. I threw it all away in order to gain Christ 9  and to have a relationship with him. This means that I didn't receive God's approval by obeying his laws. The opposite is true! I have God's approval through faith in Christ. This is the approval that comes from God and is based on faith”          Philippians 3:7-9 (GW)

Malcolm Muggeridge, a famous British journalist, satirist, cynic and an atheist until later in life (passed away in 1990), said it better than I can.   Let his words challenge you.

“I may, I suppose, regard myself as being a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the street. That’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the highest slopes of inland revenue. That’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame, even the elderly, if they care to, can partake of trendy diversions. That’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time. That’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg of you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing, less than nothing, a positive impediment, measured against one draught of that living water that Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.”

“Lord, so much of me depends on successes that fulfill me like water filling a bucket that leaks.  My triumphs eventually leave my bucket dry.  Please build into my soul a bucket that doesn’t leak, one that is capable of collecting draughts of living water that quench my thirsty soul. Amen”