“…I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:8)

God’s definition of a good life is Christ. What God wants us to have more than anything is the fullness of His Son. The problem is that we at times have a different definition of “the good life” than He does. We have our ideas of what makes a full and successful life. We measure our worth based upon these ideas. However, God will not be satisfied until we find the measure of our life in Him. He might even take away our definition of life that we might find our measure in Christ.

This is something I can personally relate to. When I was quite a bit younger and starting out in ministry, I dreamed of having a great ministry that would reach a lot of people. People tend to measure a minister’s importance and worth by how big their church or ministry is. The first thing people often ask me when they find out I am a pastor is “How big is your congregation?” To have a good life and to be somebody, I had to have a successful ministry.

Eureka Springs is not the same as it used to be. I don’t need to go into why or how things have changed, but they have. Thorncrown Chapel still gets plenty of visitors, but it is nothing like it used to be. We used to have three Sunday services. We would start at 7:30 AM, and at times we would have up to 100 people for the early service. Then we would go to our larger building, the Worship Center, and have up to 300 people for the 9:00 AM service, and we would fill the building again for our 11:00 service. That was just Sunday. Some weekdays we would have up to 50 buses a day visit the chapel. There were days when there were people lined up from the chapel door to the parking lot waiting to get in. We had to have four people staffing the chapel just to handle it all.

Now, we have only two services, and if 75 show up for either, it is a good day. The chapel is now staffed by only one person, and there is never a wait to get in. When things were declining, I would sometimes wonder if God had forsaken us. I often questioned the Lord. “Why are you doing this?” It made no sense at the time.

Over the years I began to see what God was doing. He was changing the measure of my life and my worth to Christ. I no longer need a big ministry to be have a good life or to be somebody. I have Christ. In fact, I cannot imagine going back to the old measures of my life. God could have given me a great ministry, but if He did, I may have never gained His Son. Sometimes our failures are God’s greatest successes.

Truly, what God wants to give us more than anything is Christ. At times He will take away anything in our lives that is a substitute for Christ. If the measure of our worth is found in anything but Jesus, God will sometimes bring bankruptcy to old finite measure, so we can know the infinite riches of His Son. Likewise, if our definition of the good life is less than Christ, the Lord will bring our old definition to an end, so we can possess Him.

The scriptures tell us that our God is a jealous God. Yet, what might look like His wrath is never actually that. Whenever God takes away, it is always so He can give His Son.