What Really Matters: Taking Stock of Your Spiritual Life

How many of you like butterscotch pudding? If you do, then you will be glad to know that today is National Butterscotch Pudding Day. If butterscotch doesn’t do it for you, then maybe talking like a pirate will. Today is also National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Do you know why pirates are so mean? They just arrgh. You will be glad to know that I decided not to preach with a pirate’s voice this morning.

I have learned that every day is national something day, and you can find out what day it is from the national day calendar online. This is where I also learned that a month from today, it is “National Evaluate Your Life Day.” At Shepherd Hill, every time we open up the word of God, it is “evaluate your life day.”

Seriously, taking stock of your life is a good thing to do, and most of us do it to some degree all along life’s journey. We especially take stock when we find ourselves at a crucial intersection of life or a crisis.

My chaplain job has me around men who are having to take drastic inventory of their lives. Our program builds upon the twelve-step program, and the fourth step says, “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The tenth step says, “Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

Taking stock of our lives is good, especially when making decisions about family, finances, future, and fun. It’s equally important that we take stock of our spiritual lives, ensuring we pursue what really matters.

In Philippians 3:4-11, we find the apostle Paul taking inventory of his life. He shares his life testimony and how his life changed when he met Christ Jesus as his Lord and Savior. His testimony comes in the context of dealing with false teachers.

Paul doesn’t hold back any punches when he commands in Philippians 3:2, “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.” The false teachers he refers to are the Judiazers, who taught that Jesus was not enough to be saved, that keeping the Mosaic Law was also required. Adding this fasle teaching to the gospel denies the effectiveness of Christ’s saving work on the cross, making salvation attainable through Christ and works, not Christ alone.

For this reason, Paul identifies the true Christian in verse three, “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.” When you add works to salvation, you put confidence in the flesh, and the saved don’t put any confidence in the flesh. If confidence in the flesh is required, Paul met those requirements with flying colors.

We learn from Paul’s testimony in verses four through six that it is good to take a spiritual inventory of your life.

1. It’s good to take a spiritual inventory of your life.

In verse 4, Paul begins his testimony with a boast about being able to boast, “Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.” When it came to putting confidence in our heritage and abilities and good works, Paul had many assets to trust. He names seven assets in his list. First, he names the assets that he inherited.

a. Inherited Assets

In verse 5, he begins the list of his inherited assets, “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.” Paul’s parents where Hebrews, as well as his grandparents. The fact that he was circumcised on the eight day means his parents followed the law strictly, which commands male children to be circumcised on the eight day of their life. He was no proselyte to Judaism, but an insider from birth. You could say he was of nobility. These are assets Paul inherited, he did nothing to achieve them. Now, we notice the achieved assets.

b. Achieved Assets

In the last part of verse 5, and in verse 6, he begins the list of achieved assets, “as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

Paul was of the sect of the Pharisees, which means he kept the law strictly, even tithing on their spices. He persecuted the church because the church was rejecting the Mosaic Law. As to keeping the Law, he was blameless. You will notice that he didn’t say sinless. Paul understood that where they fell short of the Law there was forgiveness in the sacrificial system to help with any deficiency. It’s Paul’s way of saying that spiritually speaking, or religiously speaking, he was a really good person.

The problem that Paul found, and we find, is that no of these spiritual assets have any eternal value apart from knowing Christ. If fact, you can be like me before I came to Christ.

I did not grow up in a church going, religious family, at all. I can’t claim that my parents were faithful Christians because they were not. I can’t claim that I grew up in the church because I didn’t. I can’t claim that I was a religious person at all before I came to Christ. My feeble attempts of becoming a religious person never lasted long after my baptisms because I was doing these religious activities to get something from God, and when God didn’t hold up the terms of what I thought was a fair negotiation, I’ll do this for you God, if you do this for me,” I turned my back on him.

I lived an ungodly life. Yet, if you would have asked me if I was going to heaven, I would of told you yes. Why? Because I thought believing in God, saying a prayer, being baptized, was enough to get me into heaven. Besides, I might have been ungodly, but I was still a good person.

There are many people, outside the church and inside the church that believe heaven is their destination because they are good people. You might be a good person, but are you as good as the apostle Paul was before he came to Christ?

As you take stock of your life, what are you trusting to get you to heaven? You might think, I’m not a perfect person, but I’m a good person, and that should be enough. It’s not enough. You have to be perfectly righteous, a perfection you cannot reach on your inherited or merited assets. Paul learned when he met Christ, that no matter what kind of spiritual assets you have, they become liabilities in relation to knowing Christ.

2. Spiritual assets become liabilities in relation to knowing Christ.

In verse seven we see Paul’s assets becoming liabilities, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” Paul uses accounting terms as he takes spiritual stock. Everything he put his trust in, spiritually speaking, moved from gain to loss when he met Christ. The verb “counted” is perfect tense, which means it’s a completed action. Paul had a decision to make, and he chose Christ.

He further describes his former assets in verses 8 and 9, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

Paul considers everything he trusted in before Christ as loss, and goes as far as saying they are garbage compared to knowing Christ Jesus. Why? Because he understood that his righteousness was not enough to save him. He needed God’s righteousness that can only come by faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

We have a sin problem, which means that our own righteousness falls short of the perfect righteousness that we must have for eternal life. Christ came and kept the Law that we broke perfectly, gave his perfect life as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, so that we could have his perfect righteousness by faith, and faith alone.

The decision that Paul made to move his confidence in the flesh to the loss category of his life and put Christ as the gain changed his life. In fact, he spent his life pursuing a deeper relationship with Christ.

3. Pursuing a deeper relationship with Christ is what really matters.

In verses 10 and 11, Pau writes, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” What really mattered to Paul, and what should really matter to us when we take stock of our lives is this: that we know Christ Jesus. What does it mean to know Christ Jesus? It means Jesus becomes our life and we seek every day to know the power of his resurrection in our lives, dying to self, and becoming more and more like Jesus, until one day, we attain the resurrection from the dead, the fulness of our salvation.

From a worldly standpoint, Paul lost everything, but from an eternal standpoint, he gained everything. Whoever gains their life will lose it, but whoever losses their life for the sake of Christ gains life.

This past Friday I was asked by a resident if he could talk with me. I said sure, and invited him to my office. He told me that he was struggling with step three of the twelve-step program. Step three is where you decide to turn your will and life over to God. I asked him why the struggle.

He went on to tell me that he believes in Christ, but is really having a hard time with God. His mother had cancer, and his family prayed and prayed for God to heal her, and he did. But my mother ended up dying is a housefire. Why would God save her from cancer, and not the fire. To make matters worse, the fire was started by his brother, who was on drugs at the time. He had started a bond fire outside the house, and then left to go pick up their sister. When he got back to the house it was on fire. Instead of trying to save his mother’s life first, his brother, started getting things out of his room so they would not be destroyed.

It made me think about what we value in life. If it came to saving your life from the fires of hell, what would you go into save first. What is the most important thing you would want to have to save yourself? All Paul had, and all Paul wanted was Christ, because Christ had all of him.

What matters to you when you take stock of your life? Is it to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, becoming more like him, until the final day of salvation? What really matters to you?

In terms of salvation and eternal life, the only thing that matters is what you do with Jesus. Have you trusted him, and him alone to make your righteous before God? You have had time to take stock of your life, now is the time to decide for today is the day of salvation. If you hear his voice today, don’t harden your heart, but respond in obedience to the wonderful grace of God.