"Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it."~ Irving Berlin
After years of serving God and now in prison, Paul the Apostle is sharing in his letter to the Philippians what he has found to be his blueprint to spiritual effectiveness. In his case, it wasn’t a matter of what he knew and how much he knew that kept him on his spiritual course. For Paul, it was his ability to keep his eyes on the spiritual prize. My personal opinion is that Paul must have been an athlete at one point in his life, because of his regular references to the disciplines of an athlete.
Not that I have already obtained or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of {it} yet; but one thing {I do:} forgetting what {lies} behind and reaching forward to what {lies} ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Phil 3:12-4
FIVE POINTS FROM PAUL
1. Pressing on (endurance, the personal perseverance necessary)
2. Laying hold of
3. Forgetting the past
4. Reaching forward
5. Pressing toward
1. Pressing on: means keep moving forward, even when it feels like you are spiritually treading water. Pressing on means to pursue with the intention of catching a person or reaching a goal.
2. Lay hold of: means to lay hold of so as to make one's own, to obtain, attain to, to make one's own,. A big part of laying hold of is to avoid distractions: i.e. Bird in hand, vs. two in bush.
3. Forgetting: Failure, difficulties, disappointments have an ability to keep us anchored to what once was, and not to what is to be. We should take inventory of those things that hold us back. The art of forgetting will keep us moving forward. This principle is based upon the law that whatever we focus on will manifest in our lives. The word used to forget implies the idea of neglect, as if to starve to death that which must be fed. As long as we continue to feed the failures and disappointments in our lives, they will exert upon us a power to hold us back. The art of forgetting inherently requires the process of forgiveness. Who do we need to forgive? Ourselves, God and others.
When living in a SHIFT Economy, it is crucial to be able to move on. Very often, when I have been working for many hours on my laptop, and it starts to overheat, then it freezes. I can’t get into or out of any programs or everything is working so slow that it takes for…..ever…. to .... do ….. anything. I then have to press ALT + CTRL + DEL all at the same time to get out of the non responsive programs. All three keys must be pressed at the same time, which brings up a list of open applications that can be forcefully ended. It also enables the user to reboot the computer. Same thing with life; when Life becomes non-responsive, you have to be able to press the ALT + CTRL + DEL of forgiveness in order to go on. Forgiveness is like the defrag on my computer, which has to be performed regularly to keep things running smoothly.
4. Reaching forward: this is the act of reaching over, into a realm from beyond the realm that we are in.
5. Pressing toward: daily discipline, according to, with the intention of winning. Study the YouTube of Dave Wottle who won the 800 Meter race in the 1972 Olympics. Dave was famous for three things: his golf cap, his strategy which often put him in back of the pack and his incredible capacity to come from behind. In the Olympic 800 meter final, Wottle immediately dropped to the rear of the field, and stayed there for the first 500 m, at which point he started to pass runner after runner up the final straight, finally grabbing the lead in the final stretch to win by just 0.03 seconds. View the YouTube of this historic race by clicking here.
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