When You're in Love...

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.”
–Jesus (Matthew 13)

Suppose you found out about a piece of land that had large amounts of gold buried in it. The gold was worth millions of dollars. However, in order to buy the land you would have to sell your house and cars. Of course this would be an easy decision for most. Who cares what you have to give up…here is real treasure! The amount you would gain would outweigh what you lost.

In Philippians chapter 3, Paul is talking about everything he had before he began following Christ. He was from a great family, had a good education, and he was a member of the most popular group in town the Pharisees. He had it all…he had the “good life.” Yet, look at what he says about these things: “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8).

Paul says that all his stuff and all his achievements are insignificant when compared to the value of knowing Christ. Indeed, he would endure any persecution and any trial because he had found this treasure. He had found Christ and nothing was going to keep him from being his disciple.

I remember when Kelli and I were about to get married, my single guy friends made comments like: “What are you doing? Are you sure? One woman for life? You sure you don’t want to date around some more?” Yet, what my friends couldn’t understand (and what I couldn’t explain) is that when you’re in love—really in love—the other “options” don’t even exist. You are not even aware of them because you’ve found this treasure and so nothing else matters...it’s all garbage.

It is the same with our relationship with Christ…our journey with him will include trials and tribulations. Following him is not always easy and there is a cost involved. But none of those things really matter because we’ve found this treasure…it’s all worthless in comparison to knowing Christ and following him.  We have found something greater…something better.