Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected, but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14
This week a watched a video clip of some well-known Christian teachers and pastors talking about their Christian heritage. When it came time for John Maxwell to talk about the Godly influence, he started by saying when it came to parents, he won the lottery. His father was a great teacher and he intentionally taught life truths to his children. Early on he taught the children Philippians 3:13, “but one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching to those things which are ahead.” Then he taught them “What you focus on expands, if it is behind you it will fade,” and monthly after that, he would teach them another life lesson from the Word of God and show them how to apply it.
There are some things we need to keep before us, that will press us into the calling God has on each of our lives. He was so focused that he would write the new Bible verse that he wanted he children to master and put it on the bathroom mirror so when they washed their hands the new verse of life lesson was ever before them. When I was a teenager, we would have dinner together as a family every night and talk about our day and what we were thinking, concerned about or excited about. Sometimes we would sit at the dinner table two and three hours discussing whatever one of us was going through. I tried to carry on the open discussions with my family, it turned out a little different. When our children were in Jr. High and High School, after I got home from work, they would all congregate in the kitchen and talk while we cooked supper. I wish I knew to be even more intentional in teaching our children to apply this life lesson. I wished I would have known to teach them to sort through the events of the day and put the things of God ever before them and to forget the disappointments, wrongs that others did to them, and failures of bad decisions behind them. To take it one step further, I wish I knew for myself to sort through my thoughts, emotions and events and prioritize them. While I believe it can be healing to share the negative and painful things with someone else, we cannot allow them to fester in our hearts. We all reflect on the things we have faced in a given time frame, and after we have shared our frustration or disappointment then we have to decide where we are going to mentally file it. For example is someone rejected you, maybe on a personal level or even on a professional level by overlooking you for a promotion, it can help to talk to someone and share how it made you feel, but then you must decide whether you are going to focus on it and get a bad attitude or put it in the delete file and trust God when He promises that He is for you and if He is for you who can be against you.
Almost all of my favorite Bible heroes suffered some ugly things and had to make the decision to put the hurts, betrayals, and heartaches behind them. Listen to the way they handled the traumatic events they faced Joseph was given dreams of leadership and his brothers sold him into slavery where he spent years in prison for something he did not do. He old his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring about as it is this day, to save many people alive,: When Joseph chose to trust God and put the wrongs his brothers did in his past, he positioned himself to not only save his family but the known civilization from starvation. He named his sons; Manasseh God has made me forget all my hardships,” and Ephraim, “God has prospered me n the land of my sorrow.” He put the evil behind him where it could not consume, he thoughts or his life and he placed before him the blessings of God and it made him able to fulfill the call of God on his life. King David was just minding his own business when God called him out of the sheep herd to anoint him as king and after God promoted hm by killing Goliath, David ran for several years and twice he was given the opportunity to kill Saul. Instead of allowing the bitterness of betrayal from controlling his heart, David said, “I will not put out my hand against my king, for he is the Lord’s anointed.” David allowed God to fight his battles and refrained from reacting to the way Saul treated him. Ruth refused to give up on the God of Israel even after her husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law all died. Instead she told bitter Naomi, “Whoever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God.” Ruth 1:16. Because she chose to place the goodness of God before her, she had the honor of being the great grandmother of King David and in the blood line of Jesus Christ. Samson made some really bad decisions that cost him the anointing on his life. The enemy blinded him physically and made him grind wheat. After all his failures and loosing his natural eyesight, he never lost the vision of who he was called to be, the avenger of Israel. He asked for forgiveness and gave his life destroying many of the philistines. How easy it would have been for Paul to become bitter at God when he spent the last years of his life in prison. If he allowed himself, he could have had a pity party and been mad at God for leaving him in jail so long. Thankfully he put the trying circumstances behind him and he went on to write 13 books of the Bible. (He is the one who wrote, “but one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.”
I do not know anyone who has not suffered some disappointments, betrayals, or setbacks. It is not life’s circumstances that determine who we are and where we go in life, it is the way we handle these things, First, we have to put behind us our sin nature. The writer of Hebrews 12:1 “let us lay aside every weight and sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Sin will always keep us from fulfilling the call of God on our lives. We must confess it and leave it under the blood of Jesus. We must set our mind on the fact that God has a great plan for each of us, Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 139:18 “How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God! How great is the sum of them?” Do you spend all your time telling God about your problems or do you tell your problems about God? To be all God created us to be, me have to put the bad things behind us and let them fade and we must put the wrongs behind us and “reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We are commanded in 2 Corinthians 10:5 “casting down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” Philippians 4:8 teaches us to take control of our thoughts, “Finally my brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things ae lively whatever things are of good report, and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things.” Our thoughts determine who we are and the altitude we rise to. I challenge you to be intentional and to think about your thoughts, emotions and attitudes and if they are negative or unbeneficial, forget them and focus on who God has called you to be.
Cathy Nesmith