Welcome to the Jesus Image podcast.

So if you guys can turn with me to Philippians chapter 3,

we're going to bounce around this evening to a couple of different passages,

but I believe that it's a word from the heart of God.

Because what we want more than anything, even as Pastor Ryan was mentioning,

what we want more than anything is the presence of God.

And there are ways that we can miss the presence of God.

There are ways that we can be blind to the presence of God.

But all of heaven longs for the revealing of the Son of Man. And in Philippians chapter 3, we get insight into Paul's,

you know, some, it would say, into Paul's journal, into what makes Paul tick into the heartbeat

of who he is as an apostle and I feel it would

be right to say as a standard of what apostolic Christianity ought to look like and in

verse 8 he he's comparing and contrasting what he's lost in order to gain Christ.

In verse 7, I'm sorry, he begins in verse 7.

He says, whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as lost for the sake of Christ.

And in verse 8, more than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may

gain Christ.

There's a way that we can gain Christ.

And he's clear to say that we don't gain Christ through a legalistic way.

It's not by earning the presence of God, but there is a gaining of Christ that's made available

in the gospel.

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