A great resume

Philippians 3:4-11

I do not have much of a resume, I finished high school by the grace of God, and it only took thirteen years.  I worked as a delivery boy after high school, and then went into the Army National Guard and after six months came home to college for two years and got married.  Worked in the oil patch until I was twenty-four and took a job in sales with 3M Company selling the worst copy machines that man has ever known.  After sixteen years of that training ground, God blessed us; that division died and I was ask to become part of the Electrical Products division, later to become the Electrical Markets Division.  By the grace of God, I was blessed and prospered in that company for forty years.  Not much of a resume, compared to the apostle Paul’s.

I will give you my take on Paul’s resume; Paul was from the chosen people of God, his family of some stature, his dad was a Pharisee and a Roman citizen.  His dad made sure that he was in keeping with the laws and requirements, circumcised on the eight days of his life.  He was from the smallest tribe of the twelve, the tribe of Benjamin, born in the great city of Tarsus, and sent to the best schools of his time.  His degree came from the greatest teacher of that day, the man Gamaliel.  He was taught the art of tent making, and became one who was welcomed and looked up to by the Pharisees and the high priest.  It could be said that Paul had a silver spoon in his mouth; he was going to the top.  Then God!

If you had known him in his early life before his encounter with Christ, his name was Saul, but when he met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, he got a new identity, a new name, a new heart, and he was open to have this new friend Jesus do what Gamaliel could not do; renew his mind, to have the mind of Christ.  He’s no longer the darling of the Pharisees, he is no longer welcome in the circles of the high priest, he is now an outcast and many, who at one time held him in high esteem, now want him dead.

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If you went from top dog to outcast, how would you feel?  Paul gives this insight in verses 7-11, “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.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count then 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 – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” 

What happen when you met Christ, the  Bible tells us we got a new identity?  What is wrong with us is it that we want the acclaim of men more than we want to know Christ?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice