INTRODUCTION
• Here we are, it is now the year 2006! Can you believe how time flies?
• What is one thing that many people do when the New Year comes around?
• Many of us make the infamous New Years resolution! Can you give me a few? (Lose weight; exercise more; spend more time with the family; go to school, etc…)
• Now let me ask how many of you had a New Years resolution at the beginning of 2005?
• How many of you completed or stuck with it?
• I do not know the real statistics concerning how what percentage of people keeps them, but I would venture to say the vast majority of people fail in their attempt to keep their resolutions.
• Why do we fail so miserably at keeping our resolutions?
• We will get back to that in a minute.
• I want you to think about some things you would like to see change in 2006. How many of us want a deeper relationship with Jesus? How many of us want to feel excited about our faith, maybe we have not been too excited lately? Maybe our faith just does not seem to do too much for us right now.
• How many of us have wanted to experience Jesus in a deeper way only to find that it is not happening. When we look around us we see a few people who seem to have a strong growing faith, but we do not feel as if ours is going anywhere, we feel stuck in neutral right now.
• Why can some people keep their resolutions and other fail? Why do some people seem to have a growing exciting faith when others do not?
• SLIDE #1
• Today I am excited to share three principles with you that if you will take them to heart and implement them, you will start to have that faith you have always longed for.
• The great thing about these principles is that you can use them to achieve success in other areas of your life.
• Today I want to take you to Philippians 3:4-14, if you have your bibles, please turn there now as we read.
• READ PASSAGE
SERMON
SLIDE #2
I. DEVELOP A CORRECT PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE. (4-8)
• One of the reasons we make resolutions is because we look at our lives and we find that something is missing.
• We find that we need to change something. If we are going to change our lives and if we are going to be successful in achieving the vibrant faith we have wanted, we need to develop a correct perspective on life.
• Let us look at this for a moment.
SLIDE #3
1. How do you define success? (4-6)
• How do you define success? Do you measure it in dollars? Do you measure it in material things? In verses 4-6 Paul recounts his life.
• By the standards of the day, he was quiet successful. He most likely had money, he was respected as a Pharisee, and he was from a good blood line.
• Paul was someone whom others envied; he was a person only others could dream of being.
• If the passage stopped at verse six, he is looking pretty good.
• What about you? How are you defining success? On the softball team Shane and I coach, it is not too hard, you look at the record, and you look at the scoreboard.
• In life it is not always that easy. What kind of price do you have to pay in order to achieve your “success”? Are you paying for it with your family, your faith?
• When Paul met Jesus, his definition of success changed. Paul realized the futility of the way his life was going. SLIDE #4
• Look at Philippians 3:7 says:
SLIDE #5
2. What is important in life? (7)
• As Paul reflected on his life, he came to realize what he thought was important, really was not.
• The statement but whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ sums up the dramatic change that took place in Paul’s perspective when he met Christ. All of the cherished treasures in his gain column suddenly became deficits. But by God’s marvelous grace, those things that he wrongly imagined would give him eternal life were replaced by five matchless benefits that were his in Christ. (John MacArthur Jr)
• If you want to succeed at growing spiritually, you will need to evaluate what is really important in life and spend your time pursuing that.
• I like what Heather said in her bulletin insert, she wanted to be a choir director, and then God rocked her world. I wanted to run a company, and then God rocked my world. Paul wanted certain things in life and then God rocked his world.
• If you deem something as being important, you will go after it. If the doctor tells you that you are going to die if you do not lose weight, suddenly that becomes important enough for you to take seriously.
• If you relationship with Jesus is important, you will work on developing it, if it is not, you will live an unsatisfying faith.
SLIDE #6
3. Priorities should be based on where you want to go in life. (8)
• As you develop a correct perspective on life, you then start to evaluate what is really important, and then your priorities will change.
• If you are going to college to get an Electrical Engineering degree, you would want to take courses that would help you to get that degree. Where you want to go determines your priorities.
• If Jesus is important to us, then He will be a top priority for us. If we have an unsatisfying faith, I would venture to say it is because Jesus is not high on our priority list.
• Look at verse 8 again with me. Where do you think Jesus was on Paul priority list?
• If you want to succeed in your faith or in other areas of your life, you need to develop a correct perspective on life.
• When your perspective is right, then you need to develop goals and habits that will help you to achieve success.
SLIDE #8
II. DEVELOP GOALS AND HABITS THAT WILL HELP YOU ACHIEVE SUCCESS. (8-11)
• When you figure out where you want to go in life, what is important and start to get your priorities in line, you will need a strategy to make it happen.
SLIDE #9
1. Having an ultimate goal is an important part of being successful. (11)
• Look at verse 11. SLIDE #10 Phil 3:11
• Paul had an ultimate objective, he wanted eternal life.
• One of the things we need to understand as study this passage is the fact that Paul is not EARNING his salvation. If we want to go to heaven, we cannot EARN it.
• We need understand that salvation is a gift from God given because of His love and grace. Growing spiritually is something that God wants us to do because it opens a whole other world of blessings for us.
• Heaven was a motivator for Paul to make Jesus a priority; he did not take his salvation lightly.
• You need to grow spiritually because god wants you to and you will be blessed beyond belief as you grow.
• Paul did not want anything to stand in the way of his ultimate goal.
• If you are going to succeed you need to have an ultimate goal to reach.
SLIDE #11
2. You need objectives along the path that will lead you to your goal.
• When you have a goal, you do not arrive at the goal without meeting other objectives along the way.
• You do not get your College degree just by going to UIS and giving them money. You must complete a certain number of classes within the program.
• If you want to lose 50 pounds, you do not just wake up 50 pounds lighter, there are objectives you need to hit for that to happen. You have to lose 5 pounds before you get to the 50!
• If you want to grow spiritually, there are some objectives you need to have. There is a handout in the bulletin that can give you some suggested objectives to reach. We take more about the hand out in a few minutes.
SLIDE #12
• Paul had objectives that helped him reach his goal.
SLIDE #13
• He wanted to know Christ. (8)
o Surpassing value means something of incomparable worth.
o To know Him means to know Him experimentally or experientially by personal involvement. The surpassing knowledge of Christ that Paul describes here is far more than mere intellectual knowledge of the facts about Him. (MacAurthur)
o Paul is not trying to earn salvation; he wants to know at the deepest level the one who made it possible. I want to know my wife because I love her.
o To gain Christ is to personally appropriate Him. Paul says all other ways to try to be saved are garbage compared to knowing Jesus!
SLIDE #14
• He wants to be right with God! (9)
o Paul no longer wants to try to save himself, he does not want to try to follow mans path.
o Righteousness is right standing with God and acceptance by Him.
SLIDE #15
• He wants to know the power of the resurrection. (10)
o SLIDE #16 He experienced the power that saved him. Romans 6:4-5 He also experienced the power that changed him.
SLIDE #17
• Paul wanted spiritual fellowship with Jesus! (11) This is a deep oneness with Jesus.
SLIDE #18
• Salvation. Paul was not trying to earn it, he wanted to experience the ultimate goal!
SLIDE #19
3. You will not reach your goal by accident.
SLIDE #20
• If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Why do we fail with our resolutions? In part we have no plan. Why do we struggle with our faith and with growing spiritually? WE have no plan! What is your plan for growth?
• See handout for some ideas for growth. You see some suggested goals on the handout, and you also see some ideas for a plan and you see something else. SLIDE #21
4. Habits are an important part of any plan; they condition you to a pattern of behavior.
• Notice on the handout, there are goals, and habits you can establish to form a pattern of behavior that will help you reach your goal.
• If I want to lose weight, I need to get back in the habit of regular exercise. That will be good for me and will help me to lose the weight I want to lose.
• If I want to grow spiritually, I need to develop habits like many listed on the handout. LASTLY
SLIDE #22
III. FORGET THE PAST AND PRESS ON TOWARD THE ULTIMATE GOAL. (12-14)
SLIDE #23
1. Do not let the past hold you back! (13)
• Paul had a lot of baggage that could have held him back.
• The past does not matter. Too many of us have let the past hold us back.
• I have been over weight for about 15 years. Should that stop me from trying to fix that?
• Maybe you have not had the greatest faith in the past, do not let that stop you from changing that.
SLIDE #24
2. Do not rest in the present. (12)
• Paul says he is not there yet. Paul was one of the most spiritual people you will find, yet he was not willing to rest in the present concerning his relationship.
• I used to be in great condition. I am not because I started to rest in the present.
SLIDE #25
3. Work toward your ultimate goal! (14)
• Paul says he is pressing on toward the goal.
• What he is saying is that he is bearing down on his goal, he has a single-minded focus on reaching his goal. The word goal means is a mark in which on fixes their eyes on!
CONCLUSION
SLIDE #26
• Do you struggle with failing in various areas of your life? Do you have a hard time keeping you New Year’s resolution?
• Are you not growing spiritually the way you had hoped?
• If you will follow the principles laid out today, you will start to see success in anything you do.
• Remember, you will not get where you want to be by accident. If you do not have a plan for growth, you have a plan to fail.
• God wants to richly bless you, growing spiritually will make you a new person, a joyful person, a person who will love life and the people in it!
• God wants to take you on a great ride, are you ready?
