Pressing on Toward the Goal

Philippians 3:12Not 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.

I have found myself in a position where God is calling me to go forward, but before I can go forward, I have to stop looking backward. I have to release the things I am clinging to. This is an oft-repeated theme in the lives of Biblical characters: move away from the comfortable, launch into the unknown, before God opens that final door through which you walk to find the specific calling you were created to fulfill.

So what am I headed for? I don't know. Hope and I have been feeling a growing urgency to pursue - something. Something. Just that: 'something.' Not some specific thing which we see off in the distance, rather, just something. The only thing we know of which is clear is that to get there, we have to give up what we are comfortable with here. That means? Well, we don't know the answer to that either. God tends to ask us to sign the check before he fills in the amount - at least in our lives.

God often asks us to say 'yes' before He makes it known what we are agreeing to do. Just go forward and trust that He will be there when we get to where He is leading us.

It is uncomfortable, people do not understand it, but 'people' are not who we have chosen to follow.