(By Kim)
Before embracing full time motherhood, I was working as the editor of a monthly magazine. I remember the time when I assigned an article to one of my team members to work upon. After she finished writing, she emailed it to me for my approval. I was pretty unhappy at the outcome of the article and I skyped a message to her saying, “what you have written is rubbish”. This girl felt very offended and hurt at the word “rubbish” and quickly she let me know this.
Her response got me thinking. I wondered whether “rubbish” was such an offensive word, until I came across Philippians 3:4-7 where apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Philippians uses the same word!
Paul says: But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them RUBBISH, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him (each day)….- (parenthesis mine).
The NIV translation of this Scripture uses the word ‘garbage’, while the King James Bible uses the word ‘dung’. In other words, Paul was saying whatever I considered important in my life was nothing.
My status is nothing.The goals I have run for is nothing. The success I have attained is nothing. The desires I have strived for is nothing. The ministry that I have built is nothing. If I am not running behind Jesus, all that I have done and all that I have accumulated is rubbish.
I thank God, for 2013 has been a blessed year for me and my family and we have seen God move sovereignly in providing supernatural breakthroughs and provisions. However there were times when we would spend more time with the things God provided for us rather than with Him.
But as the above scripture so beautifully puts it “all that we have is ‘rubbish’ in comparison to knowing Jesus and seeking after his heart” on a daily basis. 
I am not saying that we don’t value what we have, but what I am saying is that if what we have takes away our focus from Jesus, then its value is ‘dung’ compared to the surpassing knowledge that we can have by knowing Jesus each day. This makes perfect sense when you value anything against Jesus, for it really cannot match up!!!.
Apart from Him, everything else is rubbish.
God loves to meet with His children each day and allows us to discover this surpassing greatness that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. As the psalmist so beautifully puts it, “Better is one day in His courts, than a thousand elsewhere”
Lets run the race in 2014, with Jesus, to Jesus and through Jesus.
May this new year be a year of surpassing greatness in the knowledge and understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ–This is our prayer for you.
Wishing you a blessed 2014 from the three of us!