Continuing the reflection on Philippians 3:1-14, if my battery was soon to run out there are five big statements that I would be happy to make my closing chapter.
The fourth:- head for deep water.
3:10 I want to know Christ
Paul says, I want to gain Christ, I want to know Christ, I want to be like Christ, I want to be found in Christ.
He has a bunch of ways of saying it.
One day I will tell the story of my friend Kev James who died a few years back.
I am reading a book of his life he wrote while he had time – he was a one-off!
In his adult years he was struck by unbearable migraines that nothing would cure, and following prescribed medication, ended up becoming addicted to drugs, even to injecting himself up to 30 times a day while trying to hold down a senior position in the building industry, be a husband, father and church-goer.
Eventually the cause of his migraines was revealed, and it wasn’t physical.
It was going to be death or deliverance.
There is a point in his story where he simply surrenders all self-effort, and finally a break-through comes.
How does one know Christ? Gain Christ? Be found in Christ (to use Paul’s words)?
One writer says, “We learn that Christ does not become ours by effort but by rejection of effort… Paul cannot have Christ until he has totted up all his works of righteousness and admitted the answer to be loss.”
A great missionary (John Paton) was struggling to find a local word to translate ‘faith’.
He was interrupted by someone in great trouble and needing help. ‘Please, may I lean heavily on you?’ the visitor asked. Faith is (in one aspect at least) leaning heavily upon Christ; not striving but a ceasing of striving; simply leaning the whole weight of our needs upon him.
I have used the term, head for deep water, for this point of knowing Christ.
There is an abundance of shallowness around us today (confirmed by scanning daytime television); there is a shallowness being paraded as ‘must have’.
You are a vessel made for deep waters, not to be floundering in shallows.
You were made to know the wind of the Spirit filling your sails.
You are not a tinny dinghy, designed to get stuck in mud banks and bounce off oyster leases.
You are crafted for deeper waters.
“I consider all these credentials as rubbish that I may know Christ.”
Paul set his tack for deeper waters.
And yes it will bring us into encounters with the power of His resurrection as it will bring us into the fellowship of His suffering.
What is the deeper water that is meant for you? What experience, or opportunity is the Spirit blowing you towards?