Today during my reading, Blackaby makes the point that our present should be molded and shaped not by our past, but by our future -- i.e. who we will be eternally in Christ. After all, we weren't created for just time, but for eternity. In his explanation of this concept, he uses Phillipians 3:4-14, the scripture I recently eluded to in "My Ultimate Goal" post.
Paul says:
Paul says:
"I once had confidence in the flesh too. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. (For a Jewish man, Paul could have said his "deck was stacked"! He had it all going for him! And so he lists all the things that would have been seen as favorable, so many that he says he had more grounds for boasting or confidence in such matters as anyone. But he uses the past tense, "once". As if he's a different person now. As if, he no longer as such confidence.)
So I paused. I certainly have put a lot of weight on own past accomplishments. The family I came from. The kind of "pure" life I lived as a teen. My accomplishments in school. The career I pursued. The age by which I attained these goals. etc. etc. But according to Paul, these things are not worth anything. They don't really matter. They should be of such insignificance to me that I could say, "these once belonged to me, but as of now, they do not even exist in my memory..."
And Paul continues:
"But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in a view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but that is through faith in Christ - the righteousness from God based on faith. MY GOAL IS TO KNOW HIM and the power of His resurrection and the FELLOWSHIP of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
So I paused again:
Paul looks at these former "positives' in his life and in comparison to knowing Christ he sees them as so invaluable and insignificant that they could be considered a loss. So the past successes and achievements are trash. The past doesn't matter. It's not who I am. The goal is to know Christ more. That's all that matters. And because that's the goal I can even find peace in the fellowship of His sufferings.
And then he continues:
"Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus.
And again I paused:
If Paul did not consider himself having reached this goal or fully mature in Christ, then I certainly know I am not! But like Him, I can pursue perfection - continually striving to forget what has been my past. Allowing my eternal relationship with Christ to mold my present state.
The one thing that I was impressed with while concentrating on this verse today was the fact that Paul had done everything "right". In my post "My Ultimate Goal" I mentioned how that Paul's later circumstances while serving as a missionary of Christ would most likely have been seen by anyone else as "setbacks" (i.e. the shipwrecks, the imprisonments, the beatings). Paul did not allow those circumstances to define his "success" in Christ, because his "goal" had changed. It wasn't success, but rather simply to know Christ more -- even in His sufferings. And so Paul embraced the "setbacks".
But today, in keeping with the former thoughts of success vs. setbacks, it seemed more apparent to me that after considering Paul's past that it would have been even more challenging to have accepted the "setbacks" that he faced as a follower of Christ. He had had it all going for Him... he'd done it all right... lived by the book... walked the line...how much HARDER would this have actually made it to accept the "setbacks" and frustrations that came later? How much would he have been tempted to have focused his thoughts on his past glories? Living with his thoughts on the past? How easy it would have been to have accused God of having taken all of Paul's promise and just thrown it down the toilet: and asked, "What was it all worth? My talent, my achievements, my efforts?"
Aren't we tempted to do that in our own lives? To define what makes us "worthwhile" by our past... what we accomplished... what we have done... what we still do? Those of us who feel like we "did it right" can easily find ourselves being disillusioned when we aren't given "favor" in our present life. But none of it matters. We first have to realize that the goal has changed so that we can properly adjust our priorities.
I'm not trying to say that God doesn't give us success or bless us. Paul also had success as a missionary in Christ. Despite the imprisonments, shipwrecks, beatings, etc. he was a powerful minister, writing a huge part of the Bible, successfully evangelizing to millions with his ministry that outlasted his life by thousands of years. I don't think a life in Christ is a life that is full of tragedy and sadness. But I don't think it necessarily lacks it either (as some ministers seem to preach). I just think the point isn't what we often think it is.
It's not about what we have done. It's not about what we will do. It's not about us at all. And until we realize that, we will never understand our circumstances - positive or negative. We will never live in the fulfillment that we could potentially know. And we will never be what we were intended to be : our best in Christ.
So with that thought, I want to agree with Paul. I press forward, forgetting what is my past. And I accept that "my best in Christ" may not look even as successful as "my best in my past", but it really is so much more.
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