Even If I Lose Everything
We live in an accumulation culture. Here in America, there are more than 50,000 storage facilities. More than every McDonald's, Starbucks, and Dunkin' Donuts combined. We have so much stuff we can't fit it in our homes, so we pay someone to store it in a building we rarely visit.
But it's not just physical stuff. We work to accumulate influence, credentials, security, options, approval. We measure success by what we gain. We build our lives on addition, not subtraction.
However, the Apostle Paul, in Philippians 3, turns all of it upside down.
// measuring life by subtraction
Paul had everything our culture says you need. The right family. The right connections. The best credentials. A flawless performance record. By every measurable standard, he had made it. And then he calls all of it garbage. Well, actually, he uses a different word.
That word in the original Greek — skubala — is crude. It's the kind of word that would have made his readers do a double-take. It’s equivalent to 💩. You could say, “Skubala happens.” Paul chose it deliberately because he wanted them to feel the contrast. Everything he had accumulated? It looks like 💩 compared to knowing Jesus. Get the idea?
He's not just saying, "I could manage losing it." He's saying, "I chose to lose it. Because what I found was worth more."
// THE QUESTION FOR US
What are you willing to lose?
Your career? Your financial security? Your reputation? Your friends' approval?
Most of us would rather not think about it. Because if we're honest, a lot of our stability, and a lot of our faith, is tied up in those things staying intact. When they get threatened, we don't just feel anxious. We start to wonder if God has abandoned us.
And that tells us something important about where we've actually been placing our trust.
Paul warns about this. When you add anything to Jesus… your performance, your moral track record, your spiritual consistency… your security becomes only as strong as your ability to maintain it. When life strips those things away, your foundation crumbles. Not because you've lost Jesus, but because you were quietly trusting those things alongside Jesus.
// Joy Has a Location
Paul wrote "Whatever happens, rejoice in the Lord" from prison. Chained to a guard. Future uncertain.
He wasn't telling people to fake it. He wasn't talking about some kind of toxic positivity. He was pointing to something real… your joy has a location, and that location is not your circumstances.
"Rejoice IN the Lord." Not about your situation. Not because everything worked out. IN the Lord. That's the location. And what happens to your circumstances doesn't change what you have there.
// a different kind of math
There's a man named Horatio Spafford who understood this in the most devastating way imaginable.
In 1873, his wife and four daughters were crossing the Atlantic. The ship sank. His wife barely survived. His four girls didn't. When Horatio sailed to meet his grieving wife, his ship passed over the spot where his daughters drowned. He went to his cabin and wrote these now famous lyrics…
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say it is well, it is well with my soul.
He wasn't in denial. The grief was real. The loss was devastating. But Horatio had done the same math Paul did. What he had in Jesus, the presence of Jesus, the intimacy of knowing Jesus, exceeded even the weight of that unspeakable grief. Not because he loved his daughters less. But because he had discovered that Jesus was that valuable.
// This Is What "Even If" Looks Like
Paul ends this section with something most of us would rather skip. He says he wants to know Christ, experience His power, and suffer with Him.
Most of us want the power. We'd prefer to pass on the suffering.
But Paul says it's in the suffering, in the hardest, most stripped-down moments of life, that you discover something you can't find anywhere else. You discover that Jesus shows up there. That His presence in your darkest place becomes the treasure. That's where you find the joy he's been describing.
So wherever you are today… if you're watching someone you love suffer, if you've lost something you worked your whole life for, if a dream has died or a relationship has ended. Know this…
The rejoicing isn't about what's happening to you. It's about who's with you in what's happening.
Even if life takes everything you thought you could count on… you haven't lost Him. And that changes everything.
Keep looking up,
Pastor Alan is the lead pastor of Allegheny Center Alliance Church. To find out more about ACAC, go here.
