Month: March 2017

Counting All As Loss for Christ’s Sake

“But whatever gain I had, I counted loss for the sake of Christ” – Philippians 3:7

There is a transforming power that every believer experiences when he first takes his gaze of faith at Christ. Indeed, there is great change that is wrought in the heart of a Christian when he first comes to know Christ as his Savior. This was also true of Apostle Paul.

The verse I have read is part of Paul’s short autobiography, so to speak, given in the third chapter of his letter to the Philippians. In this chapter he describes his life before he knew Christ. He lists so many things, which he considered to be of great value. He mentions how he was dedicated to the law of God. Paul worked so diligently to follow the law in his own strength to the extent that he was proud of himself and referred to himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews and blameless before the law of God.

But one day on his way to Damascus, Paul met the risen Christ. As he gazed at the glory of Christ and saw the glorious righteousness of Jesus, all of Paul’s celebrated accomplishments grew dim. In fact, Paul says as we have read in the verse, that he considered all of them as “loss” and the actual word he uses in Greek is best-translated “dung.” And he surrendered himself to Christ.

Friends, this is how our life in Christ ought to be. This should be every Christian’s testimony. Our saving knowledge of Jesus Christ should mean that we grasp that our human or religious efforts to earn our way to God are rubbish or filthy rags as Isaiah puts it. Only Christ meets every need of our soul because through his work and life and death he has fully satisfied all the righteous demands of God.

For Paul it was his religion that made him proud and blinded him to his need for Christ. For some it might be academic achievements. For some it might be business achievements or riches or fame or even poverty and pain. For others it might be various trophies and medals that this world has to offer. Most of these things are not bad in themselves; however, if they keep us from beholding the glory of Christ they are dung.

Counting everything as loss for the sake of Christ is the work of God’s grace that begins on the day of our salvation and continues to eternity. Every day a Christian should value Christ above all as Jonathan Edwards once put it (quote)“Offer a Christian whatever you will, if you deny him Christ, he will consider himself miserable” (end of quote)

Every day, the Lord calls us to let go our grip on our own righteousness and the pride that blinds to the glory of Christ due to our heritage, gifts, talents, or achievements. Instead every day we have to hold on tightly to Christ and his righteousness. Every day, has to be a day in which we “count all loss for the sake of Christ. ”

For a podcast version of this post, please visit here

 

Introduction to DBS Podcast

Note: This is a script of today’s podcast. The audio can be accessed here 

Welcome to Doctrine for Body and Soul (DBS) hosted by Confex Makhalira. Doctrine for Body and Soul is a Christian podcast, which comes out every Mondays and Fridays. On Mondays the podcast brings you devotions for your encouragement in the walk with the Lord, and on Fridays the podcast analyzes current affairs, more especially, those of Africa, from a Biblical perspective. Thank you for joining us today.

Indeed a warm welcome to the very first episode of Doctrine for Body and Soul. Being a new podcast I need to give some introduction.

First, what is Doctrine for Body and Soul all about? As already mentioned at the beginning, this podcast will be made up of two components. The first component is devotional. Every Monday, the Lord willing, I will be bringing you devotions, which are brief exposition of Bible passages, to help us grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second component is a commentary from a Biblical perspective on issues affecting believers all over the world, more especially, in Africa. Every Friday, the Lord willing, I will be providing a Biblical worldview analysis on current affairs in our world. It is no secret that the world is increasingly becoming so hostile to Christians that often we are faced with the major question: “How should we then live?” In Friday’s podcasts I will be endeavoring to bring God’s Word to bear on various developments, good or bad, around the globe.

We need to remember as the hymn writer once put it, “This is my Father’s World.” Although sometimes evil seems to gain the upper hand, the truth is that our Triune God is still sitting on the throne and is guiding all the affairs of his world and his Church toward one goal which is to glorify himself. This is why Paul reminds us in that beautiful doxology in Romans 11:33 and 36: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways…For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

Indeed all things belong to God. This is why again the Psalmist in Psalm 24 reminds us that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. So let’s not lose sight of this important truth. This is our Father’s world. “O let me never forget. That though the wrong seems so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

Second, why this name, Doctrine for Body and Soul? Well, the word “doctrine” is derived from a Greek word which when translated into English means “teaching” while the phrase “body and soul” means the whole man. Often the Bible uses this phrase to refer to man as being both a spiritual and physical being. So Doctrine for Body and Soul podcast is about the Bible’s teaching regarding our spiritual and physical lives. In other words, this podcast is all about what the Scriptures teach us about our spiritual lives as citizens of heaven and also our physical lives as citizens this world.

Third, who is the man behind this podcast? Confex Makhalira is a trained broadcaster and a teacher of the Bible. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies with a minor in Radio Communications from the African Bible College in Lilongwe, Malawi. He is currently in his final year of studies for a Master of Divinity at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Having given this introduction, I would like us to look at this story from Zambia. In his blog post last week, Pastor Conrad Mbewe of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, bemoaned the growing trend among Christians there to skip church on Sundays in order to attend a football or soccer match in which the Zambian National Team is playing. Pastor Mbewe wrote on his blog, Letter from Kabwata “Zambians need to ask themselves a heart-searching question: Could it be that football has become our idol?”…When we spend a whole week anticipating a football match instead of the worship of God on the Lord’s Day and then when the day comes we abandon the worship of God in order to shout and jump and scream in a stadium (or at home in front of a television set)…is this not idolatry?”

Then following this post, this week Pastor Mbewe, has blogged another post with the title, “We have lost the sense of God.” In this post he explains that he has been struggling to understand why Christians would prefer going to watch a football match to going to church. He writes, “After my last blog post in which I addressed the issue of believers abandoning going to church on a Sunday in preference for watching a football match, I tossed and turned most of the night. I kept asking myself how believers could do this. I could not understand how even pastors are now joining in this (practice) with a clear conscience. I mean, how?”

As he continued to think through this Pastor Mbewe came to one conclusion: “We have lost the sense of God.”  He then continues to observe that this loss of sense of God has come about because of the poor view of God, which many Christians have due to poor worship and preaching in Zambian churches. “When it comes to church…there is very little pausing for a moment of silence to prepare the soul to meet with the living God. You have a band that is already playing as people chat. The worship leader starts with jokes to get the atmosphere exciting. The songs are painfully repetitious of next to nothing—“God brought me from here and has taken me there,” over and over again! The preaching is also deliberately calculated to bring people back next week rather than to bring them face to face with the living God. Hence the preacher behaves more like a superstar than a prophet from God. Can such gimmicks surely give us a sense of God?”

And I would add that this problem is not only in Zambia but throughout the continent of Africa and even throughout the world.

Now one important thing we can learn from the observations of Pastor Mbewe is that if we are to develop a solid Biblical worldview, we need to attend churches where people worship God as he has commanded in his word and where the Bible is preached faithfully. A sound church is indispensable for equipping believers who will honor God in all areas of their lives. This then means that Christians who are not attending health churches can never develop a health Biblical worldview. Therefore, we should never underestimate the grace that God gives to his people through the ordinary means of faithful preaching and God-honoring worship. That’s what all Christians need.