Title: Reach For The Top
Text: Phil 3:12-14
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Pray!!!
Introduction:
- This is the time of year, where most people take inventory of there lives and make resolutions to change. Here are the top 10 most popular:
1. Lose weight
2. Stop smoking
3. Stick to a budget
4. Save or earn more money
5. Find a better job
6. Become more organized
7. Exercise more
8. Be more patient at work/with others
9. Eat better
10. Become a better person
- Now the question is do we keep New Years Resolutions?Research shows that nearly half of Americans make a resolution each year
The bad news: Only about 15-20% keep their resolutions
In other words, over 80% of resolution-makers become resolution-breakers!
- Why is that? I think Paul has something to say in our text this morning.
- Paul presses on, or strains ahead.
- Implying there is work involved and commitment to what we are doing.
- I describe that action with this story that I found:
Our lives are fields that primarily contain weeds. We cannot produce strawberries. We can mow the weeds, but that effort alone will never produce acceptable fruit. If we really want that fruit we will have to go deeper. We must plow up the whole field and start again with new plants.
- Paul’s one thing that He is focusing on is to know Christ, to be like Christ, and to be all Christ had in mind for him.
- This goal took all of Paul’s energies.
- What’s our goal today? Is it to know Christ? To be like Christ? Or to have the mind of Christ?
- When we strive for these things as Paul did, we will accomplish everything else we set out to do.
- I think the number 1 reason we don’t reach our goals or accomplish our New Years Resolutions is because we have to many of them.
- Paul focused on one thing, we focus on many things and it become overwhelming.
- For us as Christians if we are to put all our energies into one thing, our New Years Resolution should be to know Christ, and nothing else.
Transition:
- So we have established that Paul focused on one thing and that is to know Christ.
- And for Paul to know Christ meant he had to forget the past.
- Paul had every reason to forget the past, he had watched the ones who had stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr. (Acts 7:57-58)
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- What keeps us from looking forward, to what lies ahead?
- What keeps us always looking into the past?
3 things
1. Regret
- Maybe we made a bad decision.
- We feel guilty for what we have done and it keeps us there. We don’t see that our hope is in Christ and He has forgiven and forgotten our past.
- We have all done things we are ashamed of, but we must learn from Paul and strain forward or press forward and forgetting what was in the past.
2. Comfortableness
- State of being relaxed and feeling no pain
- It’s people who enjoy comfort over pain.
- I think all of us enjoy being comfortable, but when we become comfortable it has the potential to turn into complacency which means satisfaction which then leads to apathy which means unconcern.
- Unconcern for the things around us or for God’s Word.
- Some examples of comfort over pain is:
a. Sleep over getting up for prayer
b. T.V. verses going to church
c. Bills verses paying tithe
d. Serving verses being served.
- When we get into a state of being comfortable, we no longer strive to know Christ.
- We pamper the body over disciplining our lives to be more like God.
- There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable, there are times for that, but we need to have the attitude that Paul is talking about and that is not live in comfortableness but strive to know Christ in every area of our lives.
3. Fear
- There’s the fear of failure
- There’s the fear of the unknown
- There’s the fear of change
- As the old saying goes, “To get what I never had, I have to do what I have never done.”
- Joshua 3:3-4 says, “When you see the Levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, move out from your positions and follow them. Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you. Stay about a half mile behind them, keeping a clear distance between you and the Ark. Make sure you don’t come any closer.”
- This produces fear
So how do we look to the future with confidence, like Paul describes in our text?
- With all the disappoints, regrets, fears and pleasures how do we look to the future?
1. Change the way you think
- The Bible is clear on how we should think.
- We are think of others before ourselves.
- We are to think of those less fortunate. The widows, poor the ones who are hurting.
- We should be servants and wanting to serve one another, pray for others and love one another.
- When the world gets out of our thinking and Christ gets into our thinking is when we will see Him more clearly. We will see the future as Paul saw the future with great hope and clarity.
2. Change the way you see yourself
- Don’t see yourself as a nobody, but rather as a work in progress.
- God will finish what He started in your life, and it’s not over until He says it’s over.
- Don’t be ashamed of your past, but confess your past and be forgiven.
- You can let go of your past guilt and look forward to what God will help you to become.
- Don’t establish yourself esteem but what others have done to you.
- This world will fail you, parents fail there kids and vice versa.
- But God will never fail us, and His view of us to Him was worth coming to this earth and dying for.
- You are valuable to Him, created with destiny in mind and purpose.
- The enemy wants to steal that in you by using other people who have failed in your life, don’t let him.
- Don’t let the devil steal your hope in Christ. Don’t get discouraged but press forward.
(In the movie The Patriot staring Mel Gibson, there is a scene where the Americans are losing hope in the battle. But when Mel Gibson raises the American flag that represented freedom it changed there thinking and the outcome of the war. The message is very clear, they needed to push forward and advance for the sake of freedom.)
- We need to push forward in our walk with God and become all He wants us to become, no matter what’s happened to us.
3. Change the way you think God sees you.
- God sees the finish product. He sees the end from the beginning.
- God is building a mansion for you.
- Because we are in Christ the old is gone and the new has come.
- God has forgotten the past, we need to also.
- God has a purpose and destiny for you.
- God had a plan for Job, and he lost everything.
- God will restore your life and give you more then you ever dreamed.
- Continue you trust in God, His Word and destiny for you.
- Don’t curse God and die, don’t believe the lies of the enemy, believe in God and His promises for you.
- If God said it then we need to believe it.
- Paul had every right to look at his past and say:
a. I am an educated man, these people should be serving me, and I will tell them what to do.
b. He could have said, I am a murderer and blasphemer. I don’t deserve God’s grace of mercy.
c. Or he could of said God does not love me, how could he accept me for who I am.
- But God had a plan for Paul, as He does for us, it’s not to sit here and do nothing, but it’s far more then that.
- It’s time to stop thinking of ourselves and see what God has in store for us as a church and for you as an individual.
- It’s human nature to think of yourself first, Adam and Eve did. They wanted there Physical needs met so they ate of the tree.
- What’s your vision for your life?
- Where do you want to be in life? What’s your vision for your family Dad?
- Where do you see your kids or grand kids for the future?
- It’s starts by forgetting the past.
- Forget the regret, being comfortable or complacent and don’t live in fear or the what if’s.
- Look to what God has in store for you, by changing the way you think, changing the way you see yourself, and changing the way God sees you.
- Let this years New Year’s Resolution be that I my know Christ more personally.
- When we do this, we can say the same thing Paul is saying: “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.”
Lets Pray!!!
