“I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.” Philippians 3:8

WHAT A MESS! And the SMELL??? As much as I did NOT want to clean it up, no one ELSE was going to do it! So reluctantly, and minus enthusiasm, I got started since, it WAS MY fault after all. I had set the garbage bag, WITH food leftovers, in the corner of the garage. Pushing in the lawn mower in a hurry, I didn’t see my old garbage lying there. Have YOU ever noticed how a plastic bag and a metal mower don’t go well together?

Garbage day around here is Thursday and it was Friday morning. Which meant that I had missed setting this bag out, AND that the now stinky contents had to be SUPER wrapped… since it was going to lie around for almost another week until NEXT trash day! It was a nasty job.

Last night, listening to some good Christian music, I found myself in a VERY trashy mindset. Listening to songs about the ideal Christian Life, something started to smell…REALLY bad! It took a few more reminders from satan about what I had recently said, done and felt before I realized…that smell was coming from ME! I hadn’t noticed satan’s lawnmower storming through the backdoor of my mind. Soon, I had BECOME what I was smelling! Garbage!

One of the hardest concepts any Christian can grasp is the one concerning who I AM in Christ. “There is NO condemnation to those who are in Christ,” Romans 8 says. But at the moment, I sure didn’t feel or SMELL that way! I FELT like a piece of rotting garbage. It was time to take out the trash!

If you point out to a Prince that he is a failure, you’ll have a failure for a Prince. Point out that the Prince is ROYAL and NOBEL by BIRTH, and you’ll get a Nobleman! The difference is in the power each point of view holds. According to God, there is ONLY ONE view that matters. HIS!

I was feeling down, like a failure…stinky, smelly, disgusting and ripe! But that was satan talking at me. I knew that the ONLY way to eliminate that trash was to TAKE IT OUT…by REPLACING it with what GOD says about me because of what His Son did on MY behalf! And “I” HAD to be the one to DO IT!

I AM the Righteousness of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). And the ONLY person who can make me feel like garbage… is ME! I just felt like that surpassing knowledge was worth passing on!