Philippians 3:8-14
“What 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 and 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. 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, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not 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.
Brothers, 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, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In this passage Paul is at a significant point of New Beginnings. His new beginning is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection….He has identified his need to make a complete change in his lifestyle, his choices and his thinking if he is to obtain the prize which he values above even his own life. And although in the past he was considered a superior scholar with an enviable heritage – he now counts this as rubbish compared to the inestimable value of being found ‘in Christ’.
Throughout the Bible God tells us to remember… Remember the Exodus – when I brought you out of Egypt, remember my covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and Jesus himself said to his disciples: Do this in remembrance of me… God exhorts us to remember these things because they tell us a great deal about His character and his desire for a relationship with us. It is in these events and these rememberings that heaven touches earth and begins our understanding and our remembering of God’s promises to us. It is here we find our God-given destiny. The Greek word for destiny is horizo – and it is easy to see our English word Horizon is derived for this. Our destiny is our God-given horizon. God has predetermined the boundaries or horizons of our lives, as clearly indicated in Psalm 139:16 All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
So what is it that Paul wants to forget? He wants to forget all those things that were a hindrance to him coming into the fullness of his destiny in Christ Jesus. His destiny was found in his acceptance that Jesus, by his death on the cross, provided a way for Paul to become righteous in God’s sight and thus to have a relationship with God forever more.
So what does this mean for us? Paul passionately exhorts us to find our own destiny in Christ. To cast off all those things which would hinder us from drawing closer to Jesus, from knowing him more intimately and from becoming more like him.
Paul uses some very strong words to describe his decision-making about the destiny he wants to fulfil…..
He wants to press on
He wants to take hold
And he wants to strain towards that goal….
Our challenge each day is to reflect on how deeply we desire to fulfil the destiny God has prepared for us….
Are we going to commit to pressing forward, taking hold and straining towards that goal – to know Christ and the power of his resurrection?
Taking this kind of action requires choices. We may need to look at our priorities and bring them into line with our desire to fulfil our God-given destiny. We may need to make some significant changes, but like Paul these changes will have their reward. As Paul found, even when he was in prison, because he was fulfilling the destiny God had prepared for him, he knew freedom, fulfilment and joy.
So each of us has the opportunity for new beginnings each day. Putting behind us the past that is of no value to our destiny in Christ, we can choose to be Christ’s ambassadors to each other – pressing, straining and taking hold of unity, commitment and our God-given destiny to be Jesus hands and feet in the place where he has placed us. As we do we find an overflow of our heart is Jesus’ message of love, forgiveness, hope, grace and mercy.
Remember Jesus said: I will never leave you or forsake you – He journeys with us in these decisions and will give us all the weapons we need to press forward, to take hold and to strain for our goals.
May God richly bless you as you journey with Him.
By Teri Kempe
