Values

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phillipians 3:7-11).

Throw away what you think has value in your life in exchange for what has value in God's kingdom.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels … but have not love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). The things that we think have value in our life are what we tend to hold on to, but in God’s kingdom the things that have the greatest value are the things we give away. Giving away things in love is the currency exchange system for God’s kingdom. By loving giving away material things to others, we learn to give away spiritual things as well. We prepare for giving glory back to God throughout eternity as He bestows glory upon us through the Spirit for the work of the Son on our behalf. In God’s Kingdom, the measurement of value is based on the measurement of giving—the greater the giving, the greater the value.

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Mark 12:17

While it is true that everything was made by God and belongs to God, He also bestowed a measure of His creativeness upon mankind. As a creative being, we desire a measured amount of recognition for what we create. Jesus’ argument isn’t that God made everything and God should get all the glory; His argument is that Caesar did in fact create a currency within a socio-political system and he should get credit for what he created. Caesar’s system gives value to the one who created the system: Caesar, and God’s system should give value to God. “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan.” (Proverbs 29:2). A righteous system gives credit back to the Creator of the master system; a wicked system gathers all the glory it can within its system and fails to pass on glory to a greater exterior system.

If you don't change the blueprint, you will continue to build the same house.

The blueprint describes how to build a room in a house and how all the rooms fit together within the one house. Once the building process is begun, we cannot simply change a room in the house and make it better. We have to reformat the blueprint if a room in the house isn’t working right in the structure of the house. Each room represents a value system of creativity, and each room has a measured amount of space. If the old house of sin and death is to be rebuilt in a new way of values, the blueprint has to be changed first. The building designer can’t walk into the project after the foundation is poured and the frame is set and rearrange the rooms and the layout. He has to start with the blueprint and see what rooms need to have more value before the foundation is poured. And in order to give more value to certain rooms, we have to take away space from other rooms, even if they are our favorite flower room with flagstone, even if we spend an exorbitant amount of time and money designing those rooms.

Your blueprints will show you what rooms you value, and in order to change the rooms you value, you have to change the blueprints. We have the opportunity to rebuild our house, putting to death the old house and putting on the new house, but if we don’t change what we value from the blueprint on, we will build the same house.