Thank you for the title
8 “And all things are counted as loss, because the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord is the noblest; for for his sake I lost everything, and counted as dung, I gained Christ.”
And 12 “I am not saying that I have already obtained it, nor that I have finished it, but I am pursuing that for which I was captured by Christ Jesus.” He followed the Lord with all his zeal.
As the year goes by, I would like to thank the Lord for counting on what we have received from the Lord and for walking with us throughout the year.
1. Thank God for Intervention
What we are truly grateful for is that we should be thankful that God intervened in us when we are good and when we are not, rather than wealth and environmental factors. If God does not intervene, it may or may not work, but the value of life is lost.
As said in verse 11, his strong tone, “I seek to reach the resurrection from the dead,” is the essence of the gospel that many other Bibles seek to testify of.
I gave my life to the Lord, knowing that it was God's intervention that I lived by that faith because I was thankful that I came to believe in the resurrection. He did not thank or serve the Lord sensibly or conditionally.
The blessing he received was the resurrection, and seeing the resurrection life and eternal life in heaven where he would receive an eternal reward was his joy and joy itself.
The first content of gratitude that our members who are living in a difficult world will have today is the fact that they have lived for a year, remembering the promise of resurrection to us.
Have you not had enough wealth in the past year? But thank you. This is because the God who gave us eternal life of eternal resurrection has always been with us as our God of salvation.
Hab 3:17-18 “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
18 I will rejoice in the LORD; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.”
God has intervened with us. When we were depressed, we reflected that we had not faithfully followed God, and when we met joyous things, we felt grateful to the Lord. If we really lived through this year with such a sense of humor, we could believe that we lived under God's intervention.
However, if it turns out that I have been living to the best of my ability after this and that, I was originally a person who had nothing to do with God. Wouldn't there be nothing to thank God for? But if it was a year in which you shared your will with the Lord every day, be grateful. I want you to believe that it was your walk with God during the year that you believed in the resurrection and lived.
When we look back, we confess that we were loyal and zealous that fell short of the plan we first promised during the year. Still, we remember that God took care of our saints.
You have helped me with all these things.
Gratitude is not a relative thing, it is a term originally given to God, and it is to give thanks for life itself from the heart. If we compare the things that we are angry with and being kind to people in the world and the love that God gives us, we realize that He has led us with a love that cannot be compared.
If you look at the characters in the Bible, there are people who can be called great men. In fact, if we examine them more specifically and criticize them, they are just like us and have many faults.
Nevertheless, God saw them well in their faith and blessed them and glorified them. Such is the grace given to us through Christ.
Psalm 32:1 “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven and whose sins are covered.”
God covered it and God helped me to live.
Japanese-born Sasao Tetsusabro (1868-1914) wrote 459 hymns with the background of Romans 8:28 while striving to evangelize Japan as a traveling evangelist and hymn writer.
“1 What you have been through is the great grace of the Lord.
How can I say the boundless love of the Lord?
Always watch over you and your hand
You make all things prosper in the Lord.”
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
The world we live in is actually a world played by the devil, and we live in faith, but it is a very dangerous world without the help of the Lord.
Last year alone, tens of thousands of people became frustrated and committed suicide, lost their jobs, and their families went into trouble and bankruptcy.
In the midst of this, even though we were not righteous, we can't help but thank God for the grace he has protected and helped us so far.
2. Thank you for continuing to give us hope to run forward.
12 “Not that I have already obtained it, nor that it has been perfected, but I go after that for which I was captured by Christ Jesus.”
If there is God's grace that has been specially given to the saints, it is that He has given us hope to keep running without getting frustrated. What we have gained by believing in Jesus is a strong hope for life.
There is no common experience in a world without Jesus....that is. However, if you believe in Jesus, you will discover what life is, and at the same time, your opinion on how to live or the blessed way becomes clear.
Hebrews 5:12 “Because of the long days, you ought to be teachers…
When you believe in Jesus, your soul is born again and you see the world anew. You learn how to live life and how to have it abundantly. It is living a life of worship to God. It is about finding and living a life according to God's will.
So, to the extent that Paul regards the things he thought about when he lived without Jesus as excrement in this chapter 8, we can read the qualitative change of that realization from the expression demeaning the philosophy of the world as elementary education.
If you believe in Jesus, you will not go back. After secularism, God does not want to be stained with worldly values.
Hebrews 10:39 “For we are not those who retreat back and fall into destruction, but those who have faith to the saving of souls.”
Even if we have been lacking in the past year, we can prepare for the new year vigorously by planning for improvement again. This is God's law not to lose heart. The saints must run forward.
13“Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it yet; I have only done one thing: to forget what is behind and to grasp what is ahead.”
3. Thank you for letting me see the reward
14“I am pursuing the goal for the reward of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
There is a special term for reward or reward in the Bible, and the promise that if you believe in Jesus and live a faithful life, you will receive a reward in heaven is unique.
God is a rewarder.
Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
So, when Christians live in the world, they live a meaningful life, hoping for a reward that they want to live in obedience to God's will, even though they lack it.
Otherwise, the person may simply know Christianity as a religious culture and be a Christian religious person, but if he truly has received our Lord Jesus Christ, he will set his mind on heaven.
Paul said in this chapter 20, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from there we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Therefore, the life of saints is not simply a cultural life, but in the sense that it has a scale and rules of life.
1 Corinthians 9:26 “Therefore, I do not run as though I was aimless, and I do not fight as if I was striking the air.”
We should be grateful for the Lord's intervention and hope and for allowing the afterlife philosophy of life to continue this year.
People try to settle in the world by believing in political change, the conditions of society that the world creates, or science and knowledge. However, life in the global village we have experienced is always incomplete, so we ourselves are insecure because we are faced with problems of knowledge and culture.
At the same time, experiencing the irony of poverty amid abundance, we have come to realize that our will cannot create complete happiness.
As we pass through an eventful year, I hope that you spend your last days well, thanking God for the grace of God who has guided us, helped us, and made us live with hope rather than regrets about the past that is now gone.
I pray that God will be with us with the same grace yesterday, today, and forever, and that you and I can praise God's grace while anticipating the blessings that he will prepare and help in the new year.