1 And that’s about it, friends. Be glad in God! I don’t mind repeating what I have written in earlier letters, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Better safe than sorry\u00e2\u20ac\u201dso here goes.<\/p>\n
2-6 Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances\u00e2\u20ac\u201dknife-happy circumcisers, I call them. The real believers are the ones the Spirit of God leads to work away at this ministry, filling the air with Christ’s praise as we do it.<\/strong> We couldn’t carry this off by our own efforts, and we know it\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.<\/p>\n 7-9 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash\u00e2\u20ac\u201dalong with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddog dung<\/em>.<\/strong> I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u201dGod’s righteousness.<\/p>\n 10-11 I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it. – Phil 3:1-11<\/p>\n This passage always stands out to me. It’s one that really helped me put things in focus when I was 18 and made me realize the things of this world that I was striving for – didn’t really matter. And despite the warning stuck to our back door – “Turn the alarm off” – I didn’t. So the alarm went off as soon as I opened the door.<\/p>\n I finished getting ready and sat down to check my e-mail. Laurie headed off for work and I waited my time to leave. At 6:45 I started the “process” of getting Presley back into her crate. She was perched on her favorite chair with a warm blanket and wanted no part in moving. I got her to her crate and noticed she was avoiding one side of it. Upon further examination I discovered she had an accident during the night and of course wanted to avoid laying in it. Apparently the pot roast left overs I gave her yesterday didn’t sit well with her and she couldn’t wait till morning.<\/p>\n So despite the time on the clock, I had to clean up the mess. She obviously knew she had an accident but unfortunately that doesn’t mean she’s going to help clean up. ;-). I finally got things cleaned as best as I could in a brief time, threw her blanket in the wash and put her back in her crate – smelling like an accident myself. <\/p>\n I headed out the front door at 7 a.m. only to realize my windows were frosted over again. Arrgh! I grabbed a glass of luke-warm water to clean them off, which did a great job getting rid of the frost, but apparently wasn’t warm enough to keep the water from re-freezing before I could get the truck warmed up – so I was back to scraping the ice off by hand.<\/p>\n I finally made it to the bus stop around 7:20 – just in time to catch the bus to work.<\/p>\n As I read the above passage, with the smell still in my nose of Presley’s accident it was an screaming example of how Paul felt about the things not of Christ – “dog dung.” I prayed and pray that I will feel the same way. The same sickening smell I’m smelling today should be the same smell we experience when we stray from Christ and His call on our life.<\/p>\n How do your sins\/distractions from Christ smell?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1 And that’s about it, friends. Be glad in God! I don’t mind repeating what I have written in earlier letters, and I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. Better safe than sorry\u00e2\u20ac\u201dso here goes. 2-6 Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in … Continue reading Verse(s) for the day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[532,499,497,533],"class_list":["post-3259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","category-verse-quote-of-the-day","tag-dog-dung","tag-paul","tag-phillipians","tag-smell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-Qz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEven today, as I read it for the umpteenth time the words rang just as true as they always have.
\nIt is definitely a Monday morning. I woke up earlier than normal, sometime before 5 a.m. because I apparently rolled on my back and started snoring. Laurie did exactly what I’ve been telling her to do – wake me up if I’m keeping her awake. But I was frustrated at myself because I simply don’t know how or why I tend to roll onto my back when I sleep. After that trying to go back to sleep was useless. I finally got up, made some coffee, ate some breakfast and went to let Presley out.<\/p>\n