Straining Forward

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." Philippians 3:12...."Whatever we've been apprehended for will require a great straining forward in faith to take hold of." Anonymous

If you profess to have been converted by His saving grace, may I ask you, indeed, all of us, for what exactly did He save you for? Yes, we can list things and situations that He's saved us from, but for what purpose did He transform you from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His Light? I think most of us will struggle to come up with any kind of real answer to that. I think the majority of His people live out their lives without any real purpose. What purposes we do know of seem to fall into the category of fulfilling fleshly desires; a comfortable life, a good marriage, good kids, good job, successful ministry. In short, a life that brings us satisfaction. We can lay hold of that, but do we ever lay hold of what His purpose in all of it has been, and yet remains? That Christ be fully developed in our lives?

I once read a piercing question. It asked, "Is the life you're living a life that is worth Christ dying for?" Is mine? Is yours? When He created us, He did so with eternal purposes in mind, yet not many of us live with eternity in our thoughts or view. Can we really believe that His purpose for us doesn't go much beyond our living good moral lives, attending church, giving our tithe, and doing our daily devotional? The Father put a damning proclamation upon the nation of Israel when He told them that in all their history, "they had done nothing to rescue the world." God raised up the nation of Israel to be His witness to a lost humanity. By lives lived out in devotion to Him, they were meant to draw the unbelieving nations of the world to Him. That never happened. Their purpose remained unfulfilled. Does ours remain the same?

The above quote from the anonymous source is telling. We will not enter into His purpose by spiritually sleepwalking through life. We will need to reach out for it in order to discover it. The picture of our "straining forward" is a good one because entering into the fullness of His purpose will require us to stretch out, in faith, to lay hold of that purpose. We can never realize that purpose by our own effort. It will always be beyond us. But by His grace, we can. We can lay hold of that which can only be laid hold of in Christ.

Someone said of Paul's Damascus Road conversion that, "The one who was seeking to arrest the followers of Jesus Christ was himself arrested by Christ." When he set out on that road, he thought he knew his purpose. When he encountered Christ, every other purpose in his life fell by the side of that road. He was Christ's, and the remainder of his life would be lived out as His instrument and vessel. He wouldn't turn aside from that. Will we? Have we? Do we yet live for that for which He first took hold of us? Do we live for what He died for? Or, do we live for something else? Do we live straining forward, or shrinking back?

Blessings,
Pastor O