DAILY DEVOTIONAL – February 14, 2020
“Pressing Ahead”
Prayer: Almighty God, Your mercies are new every morning. Strengthen our faith in Your boundless love and forgiveness so that we may press ahead towards the prize and victory Your Son Jesus won for us on the cross. It’s in His name that we pray. Amen.
Scripture: Philippians 3:8-14
8Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Devotional – “Pressing Ahead”
One of my favorite family vacations growing up was a snow skiing trip to Whistler, Canada. Whistler is a town north of Vancouver, British Columbia, that’s home to the world famous Whistler Blackcomb resort; one of the largest ski resorts in North America. Anything and everything snow-sports related is found in Whistler, as is Olympic Park, which was a venue for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In addition to skiing and sight-seeing, my family also signed up to go on a guided snowmobile tour of Whistler mountain. My brother and I were so excited, especially when we arrived at the location and saw our “noble steeds”. As with most tours, there is a time where the instructor prepares you, takes you through the rules and guidelines and safety procedures. This tour was not going to be through regularly traveled parts of the mountain, so both the instructor and our parents made sure we were paying very close attention.
During the time for questions before we suited up and took off on our adventure, I remember one of the other people going on the tour with us noticed that the instructor had a set of rearview mirrors on his snowmobile, but the rest of us did not. They asked the instructor why we didn’t have rearview mirrors, and the instructor said, “Because we don’t want you focusing on what is behind you. We want you focused on what is ahead without being distracted. It only takes a split second for something to go wrong or for the terrain to change unexpectedly.”
As a young boy day dreaming of racing around the mountain at full-throttle, though I heard what the instructor said, I didn’t think too much about it at the time. However, as I look back on his words today, I realize that there was great wisdom in what he said; not just for riding a snowmobile for the first time but for living life regardless of how much experience you may or may not have.
Though we often try to forget, we all know what lies behind us. Brokenness, regrets, disappointments and sin. Each of us could easily waste an entire day, even an entire lifetime, distracted by what was, by what could have been or by trying to figure out why things happened the way that they did. In our attempt to console ourselves, we have the tendency to think that if we could just make sense of it all, figure it out and provide a logical explanation for whatever it was that happened or why we did or why we didn’t do this or that, then we could live a better today and enjoy a better tomorrow. However, as the snowmobile instructor said, if we live focused on the past and distracted by what lies behind us, we jeopardize our future.
This is exactly what Paul is talking about in our passage from Philippians when he says, “Not that I have already obtained this [resurrection from the dead] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
It is important that we understand what Paul is not saying here. Paul is not saying that he is forgetting the sins or disappointments of his past; which like you and I, were many. To live in ignorance of the lessons learned from our past is no less dangerous than re-living them over and over again in our head. Paul is able to say that he can forget the past and strain forward to what lies ahead because Christ has made Paul His own. The Good News friends, is that by the same faith in the forgiveness of God given to us in Jesus Christ, you and I can say the same thing and press on with the same confidence as Paul. Through His blood shed on the cross, Christ has paid for our sins, and by faith in His death and resurrection we can know for certain that as it says in Hebrews 8:12, God remembers our sins “no more”, and as Psalm 103:12 says, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
It was Albert Einstein who said, “Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving.” Knowing Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior, we can keep moving ahead even in the hardest of times, confident of God’s forgiveness and the promise of His salvation that eternally fills the horizon.
Thanks for joining me for another time in God’s Word friends, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
