"7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." Phi 3:7-11Yesterday I told you about my days in a Marine Corps Quonset hut in Okinawa in 1958. It was an intense time living among those whose lifestyle I found nauseating and empty. I can trace the acceptance of my circumstance and the shift of my focus to a single verse of Scripture. When I happened upon it, it seemed to leap from the page. I found myself like author Annie Dillard, who, upon realizing a vast number of things in the flash of a moment, exclaimed, "I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck."
It was late on a Sunday evening. I was on one of those rickety old Oriental buses as it weaved and bobbed its way back to the base. Everyone else around me was in a drunken stupor or snoring in an exhausted sleep. I was sitting in the back seat, thumbing through my new copy of the Amplified New Testament with the aid of a flashlight, and there it was, waiting to be discovered . . . to be believed . . . to be put into action. Philippians 3:10 said all I needed to hear:
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