It’s too Late to Give Up
Ecclesiastes 9:11
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Thorns in our flesh help keep us stable, keeps us humble
If we never have afflictions, then God will never have the opportunity to deliver us
1Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
2Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. 3For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What 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 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Pressing on Toward the Goal
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
17Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. 18For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
If we look up a couple verses, we find what Paul’s desire was; and his main focus and concerns were on Christ and Heaven. The apostle Paul had his heart upon Christ. This should be every Christian’s desire in their heart, to know Christ, not only to know Christ, but to Win Christ. Everything that we do should be with the intent to win Christ or in other words, to please Him. We as Christians don’t have a leg to stand on, if we don’t have righteousness, but not own, not self righteousness, not getting caught up in ourselves, not feeling like it ain’t right unless our hands are in it or a part of it, but that righteousness is only through the faith of Christ.
You can’t please Christ if you don’t know His ways. We must get to know Him through our faith and the word of God. In verse 10, it reads I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death-- knowing Him is believing in Him—we are made conformable to his death when we die to sin—and just as Christ died to sin, when we are crucified with Christ, the world is crucified to us. In other words, we have to change the desires, from fleshly desires to spiritual…the bible declares in Psalm 37:4
Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
We have to get that desire in our heart for God, this was Paul’s desire, it was to be resurrected from the dead! Paul had his eyes fixed upon this, this is what he wanted to attain. So many of us get caught up into right now so much, that I believe we literally forget why we are here, why we are living…we are living that we may live again, it’s not for any worldly gain, but a Christ gain.
Paul speaks about the resurrection of the dead—because believe it or not, Christ is coming back, and he’s coming back for a church without a spot or a wrinkle, so there will be a resurrection. Now, if there is a resurrection, then this resurrection is two-fold,
1. There will be a resurrection of the just
2. There will be a resurrection of the unjust—we who have come into the knowledge of God must escape the resurrection of the unjust because the resurrection of the wicked will be rising from the grave then to a second death of eternal torture.
But the resurrection of the just shall reign with our heavenly father for ever. It was the joyful resurrection that Paul pressed towards. He speaks about it as if the people were in danger of missing it and falling short of it. It’s no coincidence that Paul was sending a refresher course to the Philippians, and the same is for us today. We have to constantly be reminded of what our main focus is.
So many times today, the pastor has it so hard because his members just can’t get it together. The pastor can’t focus on kingdom building because the members have seemed to have taken their eyes off of the prize, and they begin to start looking at their short comings and start looking at the other members who seem to be pressing forward and now all of a sudden, the members want to be pacified, and the next thing you know, they start whining and crying the blues, of how things aren’t just going their way. Now the man of God has to stop everything that he’s doing just to pacify the one member who’s causing havoc to the body, and they have to literally put the kingdom building on halt until that person can get themselves back together. This is what Paul wanted to remind the Philippians about.
Our main focus, should be to please God and we shouldn’t let nothing stop us from reaching that Goal. When you have a fear of falling short of the glory of God, you begin to get to another level of intensity to do good. It’s kind of like a good child that is trying to make their parent’s happy…the only thing that child wants to do is make their parents proud. None of us likes the feeling of rejection, and that’s the fear that we have when we feel that we’ve let our parents down—the same in the spirit realm. When we feel that we’ve let our Heavenly Father down, we get fearful of that, because we don’t want to feel like he’s going to abandon us. But the good news about that is that God promised, in Hebrews 13:5
I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
So we should be confident in knowing that God is always by our side, but we also need to realize that we can’t do this on our own.
A lot of times, we get distracted along the way. Many times, those distractions are set in place as stumbling blocks because of the spiritual growth that is about to take place. Have you ever noticed how you’re doing just fine, going to church every Sunday, praising God, blessing his name every where you go, just filled with so much Jesus Joy, then one day, life hits you with a boom and all kinds of chaos and havoc begins to take over your world? This begins to happen when you’re embarking on your next level of spiritual maturity.
So you have to be able to know that this is your last test before moving up to the next level. And if you’re going to pass this test with flying colors, then you have to be rooted and grounded when this test comes along. See, it’s not really a test-test, it’s just a pop test, look at your situation and say, it’s just a pop test…that’s right, it means, in other words, that sometimes, things just pop up to see if it’s going to shake you or move you, but this test is for the ones who are rooted and grounded in the Lord, so that when these tests comes up, you will be able to stand and say like Isaiah 54:17
No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.
We have to immediately be able to stomp the devil with the word of God, and watch him flee.
Now, everybody ain’t going through “tests” some of us have stepped out of line, or the will of God, and just haven’t figured out how to get back in. For those people then we just need to remember this one thing…go back to the basics. If this applies to you tell yourself I need to go back to the basics.
See some of us skipped a couple of classes when we got off the milk to the meat…and now you’re falling somewhere in between. Oh yeah, you know how we do, we get a little bit of spirituality and now we know so much, that we’ve outgrown the pastor, Oh I know I’m talking to somebody right now. We get to the place where no one can tell us anything, but yet, we keep going through this trial and that trial, and we can’t quite figure out exactly why we’re going through it. First of all, get back to the basics. Well, what is the basics sis?
1. The word of God, what is the acronym for the bible? Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
Here’s some of our problem, we can’t seem to follow basic instructions. And it’s funny how some folk know everything, but then come to you with a problem, you ought to look at them and tell them to just follow the instructions…For every situation that we are in, the answer is right here in the Word of God.
2. Prayer. What is prayer? Open communication with God. Now some of us have a problem with communication period, so of course, they won’t go to God with anything, but the good news about going to God is, you don’t have to worry about him telling another soul about what’s going on with you, and not only that, but if you give it to him, he will relieve the stress, the pain, the hurt, the disease, the problem, the situation before any man can.
3. Fellowship- some of us get to the point where they say God told me to stay home for a while and get myself together…the devil…1 John 1:7
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Why would God go against his word for you? God is not a man that he should lie…so God ain’t told you not to fellowship with folks because you need some ‘ALONE’ time.
--looking back at the scripture... Paul is so humble in verse 12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, in other words, not bragging or anything, because I’m still trying my own self, but I do have some sort of understanding concerning this Christian walk… but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…in other words, I’m not going to stop running this race, even if I stumble sometimes, even if it seem that I’m reaching out as far as I can reach, I’m still going to stretch out because I know he’s going to reach out for me and give me the strength I need to make it13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.—I still don’t have it, I’m trying as hard as I can, every time I feel that I’ve gotten it, something gets in my way, something tries to hold me down… But one thing I do:--There’s always something that I can do to encourage myself… Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, --forgetting that mess behind me, forgetting what I did before I got here, forgetting what I did yesterday, forgetting what seemed to be a strong hold in my life, forgetting all of those thoughts that the enemy keeps reminding me of, forgetting all of that stuff!14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.—I’ve got to go forward, thinking about all of the things that you did on yesterday is the very thing that will hold you and stop you from moving forward to the blessing and the prize that God has for you
he says compared this Christian walk to a race, he had to take this, and make it plain for us. So many of us have faith, but we need to see things in order to fulfill it.
So Paul said imagine if you will, that you were on a track, and you’re running this race, you’re doing pretty darn good, I mean it seems that you in the lead…but all of a sudden someone comes up beside you and you realize that they’re there. First of all, you forgot something they’re in the race, but they’re running their own race, yes, they’re trying to win, but your battle is not against them, so you can’t lose focus, you have to keep your eyes focused on Jesus! But while you’re looking, you notice that you begin to slow down a little bit and they begin to move ahead of you, the reason for this is because you can’t quite seem to focus, again, you have to focus on your race, not theirs…so you have to go back to the basics…in going back, you see that there was some stones you left unturned, there was some unforgiveness that you had in your heart, there was some hatred that you had in your heart, and so now you have to pray and fast and ask forgiveness.
Now that you gotten yourself together, you find yourself back on track, now don’t lose focus this time, but wait the person in front of me looks like they’re going to get my prize...don’t worry about that because you have you own crown waiting for you in Heaven…your reward will be waiting on you, but you must remember that you have to press! No matter what comes your way, you’ve got to press! No matter how many distractions come your way, Press! No matter how high the mountain may seem, Press, no matter if you just fell yesterday, Press, no matter how many times the doctor gave you the ill report, Press! No matter how many people stab you in you back, Press! No matter how fatigued you feel, Press!
You must press, you can’t stop, you have to reach your goal, Christ is waiting for you at the finish line. Don’t you see him standing in your corner, routing you on, he has his arms stretched forth waiting for you, he’s saying don’t stop now, keep pressing for the prize.
In other words, it’s too late to give up, God has brought you too far for you to give up now. Yes, you’ve been through hard times, yes you’ve had to struggle, you’ve been stuck between a rock and a hard place, your back has been against the wall, there has been numerous occasions when you felt like the weight of it all was going to knock you over the edge—but I’ve come here to let you know it’s too late to give up, it’s too late to quit, God’s got your back!
Yes, you’ve come a long way baby, and the journey’s just beginning…you’ve been stepped on, picked on, knocked up, and knocked out, but because of your faithfulness, God is giving you double for your trouble, he’s taking you to a higher place, a higher anointing. Yes, you’ve experienced another devil, because God is taking you to a higher level and you’re just at the threshold of your breakthrough, your change, your change, yes, it’s gonna come because you won’t give up, you won’t quit, you’re determined to press…tell somebody I won’t give up, tell somebody, I won’t give up, say I’m going to press, I’m going to press with everything in me, I’m going to press…now give God some praise for the press.
