"That I might know him and the power of his resurrection."

Phil 3:10

This is an amazing scripture, one of my favourites. Favourite because it's talking to the point. The most important person worth getting to know, is not the president or a pop star or some other important person, it's Jesus Christ.
Paul said here that his one all consuming aim in life was to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection. He wanted the reality of that unstoppable, unquenchable life in him. For Paul, Jesus was worth all that he gave up to follow him. He could have remained a Jew of Jews, had the acclaim of all the top big wigs in the Pharisee world and lived out his days by the traditions of his long bearded ancestors but the day that he ran into Jesus on the Damascus road, all his preconceived ideas of what was important went out the window.
When we have our eyes open to the truth about life, everything changes.
Life, as Paul said earlier in the chapter, is about winning Christ! Lose him and you are sunk like a bath tub with no plug dropped in a lake!

Paul had lived by a very disciplined code. He was zealous over performing every law and observing all the ways life as a Jew were to be lived but once he saw Jesus, all the things that had made sense to him, no longer did.
"Everything that I counted as gain (having some worth/advantage) I then counted as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of the son of God."
It's an excellent thing to have your eyes open to the fact that Jesus is the son of the living God and Know that your not here anymore to serve the mundane habits of life but to serve the prince of life himself!
Within Jesus Paul found the answer to life and he lived everyday with the desire to get better acquainted with him.
Are you missing someone vital by not knowing what Paul knew?
Paul experienced the same power that raised up Jesus from death, i.e. the Holy ghost. His life was transformed by the same life that was in Christ as he defeated Satan at the cross and went down into hell defeating death and the grave and rising from the dead on the third day.
This resurrection power that Paul wanted to know, we saw evident in his life as we read his story. Nothing stopped this guy, time and again he would be set upon by angry mobs, stoned, whipped, imprisoned or sunk, but every time the power of God got him back up again!

Just as it was impossible to kill the prince of life (Jesus) if we have the same spirit of Christ dwelling on the inside, then we too like Paul will rise back up above the troubles that constantly can threaten to overwhelm us.
I know that all of us have lives filled with stuff, distractions, attractions even subtractions but if any part of this hodge podge of life is stopping you from knowing Jesus better, then like Paul you need to start counting it as lost to you so that you gain the prize!

Our prize at the end of our lives transcends any earthly award. Forget the oscars or the golden globe, forget the lottery, Jesus is the prize to beat all prizes.
Paul says it like this. "This one thing I do; forgetting those things that are behind me and reaching forth to those things before me, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
Let as many then of us who are of the same heart as Paul and catch the same vision of how amazing Jesus is, do the same thing. Let's press on past the distractions of life, past all the daily cares and troubles, beyond our past failures and look ahead with faith believing that there is an incredible future and hope in Jesus.

Dade