{"id":2499,"date":"2014-08-08T15:34:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T15:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2017-07-13T19:26:31","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T23:26:31","slug":"the-worth-of-having-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/the-worth-of-having-nothing.html","title":{"rendered":"The worth of having nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"\"IMG_8375\"<\/a>\n

“Those things were important to me, but now I think they are worth nothing because of Christ.\u00a0<\/span>Not only those things, but I think that all things are worth nothing compared with the greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:7-8 NCV).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

We just returned from ten days in Guatemala. Ten days of having no home of our own, no car, no computer, no control over our own\u00a0schedule, no TV, no Facebook, no email, no Spanish (I was dependent on a translator), and no ice (You’d miss it too!). And perhaps more challenging than any of these, it appeared there would be no cheesecake for me and no Dr. Pepper for our teammate, Eddie, until these important sustenances of life were discovered late in the trip.<\/p>\n

At first the lack of these things combined with the lack of sleep took its toll on us. The fleshly voice in my head cried out in childish whimpers, “Please don’t take this away from me too.” Yet, after a while, there is a certain liberty in living out of a suitcase and focusing only on relationships and mission. An acute sense of God’s presence and joy seemed to increase as our comforts\u00a0and control decreased.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we all need to purge our lives of its accumulated trappings from time to time to realize what really matters. Going on a short term mission trip will certainly\u00a0help with this. But it’s only a temporary fix, unless we determine to make it our new normal.<\/p>\n

Now that we’re back in the States it’s tempting to dive back into our former routines. But what if we decide\u00a0to see ourselves on mission here too? What if we choose\u00a0to become like Paul who counted all things as “worth nothing” compared to knowing Christ?<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

Going to Guatemala we discovered the worth of having nothing. Having “nothing,” we realized that what is left is really the “something” that\u00a0is most needed.\u00a0What is left is what will last. What is left is relationships\u2026 with Christ, with His people and with those He is calling us to reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Those things were important to me, but now I think they are worth nothing because of Christ.\u00a0Not only those things, but I think that all things are worth nothing compared with the greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:7-8 NCV). We just returned from ten days in Guatemala. Ten days of having no<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061,1,2062],"tags":[2069,2239,2095,2070,2049,2305,2293,2306,2038,2307,2308],"location":[],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","category-uncategorized","category-weblogs","tag-christ","tag-comfort","tag-gary-combs","tag-god","tag-joy","tag-lack","tag-missions","tag-plenty","tag-relationships","tag-simplicity","tag-worth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/garycombsorg.s3.amazonaws.com\/uploads\/2014\/08\/IMG_8375.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6075,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/6075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}