Philippians 3:11 Inductive Bible Study: Sacrifice 3/19

Philippians 3:7-10 says, "But what things were gain to me, that 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 through faith: that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,"

Philippians 3:11 says, "If, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."

MaKayla-ese: "If there's any way at all that I may be able to work towards the goal of  the resurrection until I achieve it."

So keeping the previous verses in mind, after forsaking everything that the world has to offer me, gaining Christ's righteousness through faith and not my own, I am able to know Christ, the power of His resurrection, suffer like Him to be in fellowship with Him, and even die to myself and not stay dead but in Christ, I might achieve life after death. Truth life. Eternal life.

Something I have been struggling with lately is figuring out who I am. All throughout my life, I have had a really hard time making friends. I have felt unliked. I was bullied when I was younger and so I still struggle with believing the lies  that I was told about myself back then. I have never been confident. I have always had low self esteem. And throughout the last four years, I've been on a depression rollercoaster. Something that I've realized while I've been here is that I try really hard to be like other people, and because that isn't who I am, people don't like being around me when I'm like that because I'm being fake(which totally makes sense).

Ok so this might all seem random but I feel like what God has been showing me this week  through these verses is that if I do all these things that I've been mentioning over and over, and I die to myself, and then attain the resurrection, it's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. That takes all the pressure off of me. I don't have to try. Christ is living through me. There's no more striving, it's just dying to me and letting Him live. Giving it to Him. Giving Him the struggles, the pain, the successes, the glory, everything. It doesn't really matter who I am. It's about who He is, because if I do these things, it's going to be Him living through me that people see anyways. MaKayla doesn't have to try to be anything anymore. That takes so much anxiety off of me. I just have to lay down my life and let Him live. There is so much peace that comes with that decision. Now this doesn't mean that it's easy. I have to die every day. But it is so worth it. And it is so much richer of a life than I have been living.

Application:
Today I am going to make a bookmark out of Philippians 3:7-11 and put it in my Bible and highlight verse 11 so that I remember to die and let Jesus live through me.