Philippians 3:8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

Do we have any cooking show fans out there? Deconstruct is a term for taking a well known dish and tearing it apart into its component parts and then putting them back together again to construct a new dish. The reason I use this term here is that the elements are not lost, just used in a new way.

Paul declares all but lost and all but dung here in Philippians. That means they are not lost and they are not dung. He has had to deconstruct his former life, his former training, his former thinking and put them into a new perspective, a new order, a newness of life, but they are not lost on him.

We all have a past. We all have done things we want to forget. We all had errors in our beliefs. It is a truth that this past life, while gone, while forsaken is not lost to us. Many of us find it difficult to do this very thing that Paul has done, to deconstruct in order to glorify God.

Galatians 1:17-18 Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.

While it is true in Acts 9 that Paul had a conversion story, the effort to deconstruct took much longer, at least three years. That being true, we need to understand that unlearning what we thought we knew is not as easy as merely changing our minds.

We suffered a past to glorify God and learning how to do that isn’t easy or instant.

James 1:21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

The first thing you might ask here is how this verse relates to history in any way. That would be a fair question and the thoughts I bring to this devotional stem from an impression I received from this verse. The quote is from the King James Bible version of the bible. This one thought struck me as I read it. Did they really use a word like superfluity in the 1600’s?

Looking up the word I found its roots in the 5^th century, in Latin. The word was not in common use during the time of the origins of James 1:21. In the Greek the word used was perisseia. But was Greek the original language? Probably not. I seriously doubt that the original documents still exist. We have copies that were distributed widely in the most commonly used languages of the time.

Now I come to my point. We have throughout history tried to make the languages of the bible to fit and make sense to all the tribes and tongues of all the nations. Great care had been taken to render an accurate rendition of the original texts which were but ancient translations. Given that so many people had so much input to so many translations you would think that something would be lost.

The only danger of something being missed is the same today as it was the original first copy ever created. If we focus on the accuracy of words, if we seek words, we might stop seeking God.

Faith only has one version and that is written in the heart.