My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you. Philippians 3:10-16 HCSB
You will note that our scripture passage today starts with the words, My goal is to know Him. I love this because it is truly the best place to start. If you want to get to heaven the best place to start is by getting to really know Christ. Lee Strobel was a non-believer who did an in depth study and wrote a book on his study which is entitled the Case for Christ. His book was made into a documentary and also a movie. I strongly encourage you to read the book and watch both the documentary and the movie. He really studied Christ in an order to prove that He was not real or did not exist. He proved the opposite. This study made Strobel a believer. Hopefully, your goal is to know Christ if you don’t already.
Now, once we get to know Christ and accept Him as our savior, the next goal should be spiritual maturity. You see there is a reason that when we are saved, people say that we are born again. That reason is because we start out like babies just learning how to walk and talk. As we progress we need to learn that our walk should match our talk. If our mouths profess that we are Christians, our actions should do the same.
Now if your goal is eternal life in heaven with God the Father, then know that it requires some work. Once we are saved, we have a job to do. I heard it put this way recently, “if we had no work to do after we were saved then wouldn’t we all just be called up into heaven as soon as we were saved?” Think about this for a minute. We are called to salvation because God needs workers here on earth. He needs for us to bring as many with us to heaven as we possibly can. Perhaps you are a baby Christian and new to a life of salvation and are unsure what your job is. Maybe you are unsure about how to find out what your job is and how to get started. Well, this is where that whole faith thing comes in. This is also where perseverance is key. The devil does not want you to be successful at being a Christian. If you develop a good, close, personal relationship with your Lord and Savior this infuriates the devil. He sets about to destroy this relationship and above all to destroy your witness.
The best way for the devil to really shake things up is to get into your mind. Joyce Meyer wrote a book Battlefield of the Mind and also has a Bible study by the same title. If the devil is messing with your mind I strongly encourage you to read this book. It is filled with scripture passages that help to strengthen your mind against the devil.
If the devil can cause fear and anxiety about tomorrow, he can really destroy your witness. I mean let’s face, any non-believer who looks at some self professed Christian who is shaking in their boots and wringing their hands and saying, “Oh no, what am I going to do?!” will not be impressed. They will probably be wondering where is that God that we profess to believe in all of this? But when the non-believer sees you handle the blows that life throws at you with confidence and peace and joy then they know that you have something that they don’t have. They want what you have.
The other thing the devil loves to do is keep us in the past. The devil loves for us to remember the yesterdays. He likes for us to remember when we messed up because he can then work his way into our mind and tell us that we can’t keep from making the same mistakes so this Christianity thing will never work for us. He wants us to think that we can’t possibly serve God with the kind of past that we have.
He also wants us to keep score of all the wrongs that others have done to us. He will bring that to mind when we are trying to trust God with that other person. He will remind us of something that happened many years ago. He will want us to believe that he can still control that other person and that God can’t help the other person.
The devil is a liar (John 8:44). You must keep this in mind. You must remember that no one wins a race with their head turned back. They must focus on the finish line in front of them. Looking behind not only slows you down, but it can cause you to stumble. You might just trip over something in your path.
No matter what your past is, God wants you. God loves you and wants you to enter into a close, loving relationship with Him. He wants you to repent of your sins and accept the forgiveness that he offers. When we do this, he removes our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). He is waiting for you. He is hoping that you can forget your past and accept a bright future with Him.
Today, I encourage you to let go of your sinful past. I also encourage you to let go of former pain and heartache that others have caused. This kind of baggage just slows us down. Can you imagine a runner trying to carry an extra large suitcase that weighs 50 lbs? That’s what it’s like when we carry these heavy burdens. Give it to God and let it go. Remove the burdens of yesterday that keep you from pressing on toward your goal.
Run strong and stay focused. The finish line is just up ahead and God is waiting there for you with open arms. Turn to Him now, He wants to walk with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5). And when the road is too rough, He will carry you.
We can’t do anything about yesterday, but with God’s help we can make tomorrow a great day!
Have a great weekend!