Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)It is the New Year, when we start making resolutions about how much better we are going to do than we did last year. And they are good resolutions, too. Some of them last all the way to the last of January. Some, of course, barely get off the pen or computer keyboard before they are dead. But they are all well-meaning, of course.
May of our New Year’s resolutions have to do with self-betterment. We want to get back to how we were when we felt better, when we were younger. And of course, again, that is impossible. It’s like a t-shirt I saw one time that said, “The older I get, the better I was.”
One of my favorite crime/suspense writers has a character he has written about for 30 years. The longer he writes about him, the larger the character gets, the more weight he can bench press, the longer he can run and the bigger caliber his gun is. It is almost as if he is trying to rewrite his own history in his character. The only problem is, although his character gets better with the passing of time, he himself only gets older.
We cannot get back to like we used to be, whether as a church or as a person. Everything, everyone grows older. We can be as good as we were, but never as we were. We have to put those things behind and become what God wants us to be right now, at this time, in this situation.
When you make your New Year’s resolutions, forget the past and look to what God wants of you right now, with your family right now, with your job right now, with your life in service to him right now.
Press on to the goal for the prize and be what God wants you to.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.