Philippians 3:14 says I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Very familiar verse, but how does one continue to press on toward said goal? As Christians we get in a habit of accomplishing goals that we know without a shadow of a doubt we can complete. We like to stay in our comfort zone, never stepping out and stepping up into something we cant do on our own. I realize the above verse is saying our goal is heaven. That we can all press toward heaven, but god also has goals for us here on this very earth as well. Yet, I am telling you we can never complete all the goals god has for us by dwelling in our comfort zones, by accomplishing things on or own, with our own talent, by our own merit. We need to learn how to truly depend on god (DOG it up), not on our own intellect, our own talents, our own attributes. Still that is kind of scary huh. I mean to admit there are things out there we cant accomplish on our own. Things out there that if we go on faith we may be able to undertake but due to our own very selfish, very dependent, very own ego and desires to do things individually we never take the chance. We never meet the challenge, we never press onward. Think about the characters in the bible, it seems all of them ended up out of their comfort zone in order to complete the goals god has set for them. Moses tried to step away from being the leader of god’s people by complaining of a speech impediment. I would imagine the true moses (not charleton heston) would have never wanted to be a leader and had to be very uncomfortable doing the social tasks that god laid in front of him. Think of jonah who was obviously uncomfortable witnessing for god to his bitter enemies (think Michigan helping out ohio state). Jesus himself showed some discomfort in the garden when he asked his father to remove this cup, but eventually said your will not mine be done. How many of us are willing to really say that, and mean it, and allow it to grow in our lives. I can remember a youth rally I spoke at about 18 months ago. It was an outside, night youth rally which was a different venue then what I was use to. I had worked on a lesson for 10 days or so and was feeling very good about delivering the message. Once I got up to speak, I felt very uncomfortable, as the lights blinded me, and the stars shone above, the darkness of the evening had say in and I was not comfortable up there. I could not see any of my notes, and completely honest my human fleshy part just kind of tried to take over. I begin to speak and I felt it was rhetoric and at times just straight bible. I felt like if anything I was confusing people, but I prayed that god to help me out. See I am very comfortable in the bright, all eyes on me, public speaking world, but that night, I felt very uncomfortable. Once I finished what I figured was the worse “sermon” I ever delivered we had an alter call and to my amazement, the alter was filled. God really showed his love that night, it became one of the nights in my life that I look back on and know how real and great god is. Many people told me I made perfect sense and did a good job speaking after that program, and well honestly they could be just being nice……….still I know I was uncomfortable, and god had my back. What good is it to just do things for god that we are good at, lets do things that challenge us, make us weary, make us uncomfortable, lets press on toward goals on earth along with pursing heaven ALWAYS…………..
G’s4G