{"id":5126,"date":"2023-09-10T02:43:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T02:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=5126"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:47","slug":"backwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=5126","title":{"rendered":"BACKWARDS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Phil 1:21, the Apostle Paul writes, &#8220;For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It seems to me that modern American Christians tend to get this backward.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We spend our lives &#8220;making a living&#8221; and getting more and more stuff. Our highest goals involve making ourselves and our family members as comfortable as possible. The name of the game is accumulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, we assume that once we die &#8211; and are confronted with the reality of God&#8217;s existence once and for all &#8211; suddenly we will develop a keen love for Jesus Christ and an interest in being with Him.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, unlike Paul, if we are honest, we would have to say, &#8220;For to me, to live is gain and to die is Christ.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Phil 1:21, the Apostle Paul writes, &#8220;For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.&#8221; It seems to me that modern American Christians tend to get this backward. We spend our lives &#8220;making a living&#8221; and getting more and more stuff. Our highest goals involve making ourselves and our family members [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5127,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions\/5127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}