Pressing on, part two!

When my alarm rang this morning, my husband put his arm around me and said, “Happy Mother’s Day.” I told him that I felt more like a great-grandmother this morning (I actually am a great-grandmother). Even though the calendar says I’m still in my sixties, some days I feel totally aged, tired and ready to quit. But I don’t. I got up and am ready for whatever this day brings.

However, for years I’ve noticed that many senior Christians seem to lose their enthusiasm for Christian growth in their own life. They stop accepting positions of leadership and seem to stop serving others, content to sit back and let the younger people do everything.

This morning and other days when the physical problems of ‘too many birthdays’ bother me, I’m more inclined to sympathize, but generally want to fight that tendency in my own life. Retirement isn’t a Bible word nor does it seem to be a spiritual concept.

Instead, Scripture urges me to not only start well, run well, but also finish well. Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34), which of course He did.

Jesus was given a very short time and didn’t become an old man, but Paul also talked about finishing well. He said, “But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

Later, he was able to declare, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).

I want to be able to say that too. I am not sure if God will call me away from being involved, but unless He does, I intend to keep at it. I not only want to be busy in the work of serving Him and others, but busy in the race of becoming more like Jesus. I want to keep pressing on.

My verse for today is again in Philippians 3. It says:

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. (Philippians 3:12)

In verse 11, Paul said he had not arrived at his goal. In this verse, he uses a different word. Instead of “arriving” he talks about “attaining” in the sense that he has not yet “gained possession of” or “laid hold of” all that he seeks to be. He knows the goal line. It is maturity and being like Christ, and he also knows that he isn’t there yet.

This idea of being perfected is not moral or sinless perfection. It is reaching a state of completion as a Christian. At this point, I don’t think that can happen to any of us until we are in heaven. For that reason, I must press on. Until death, there is no excuse or reason to quit.

My commentary says that Paul “pursues with all deliberate speed” the goal that was before him. This verb form indicates that he is doing this continually; he does not quit. He never allowed internal or external circumstances to stop him, and he faced far greater threats to his life and well-being than I ever will.

The idea of laying hold of his goal adds the idea of overtaking by surprise in the sense of seizing his objective. Paul urgently wanted to “grab hold of” God in the same way that God had grabbed hold of him. This is described in Acts 9:1–22 where Christ dramatically and suddenly seized Paul on the road to Damascus, and his life was never the same after that.

I can relate. Christ did the same thing to me while I was reading a book that was taking me on the wrong road also. He suddenly seized my heart and set me in a different direction.

Now I want to seize His life, His character, all that He is, that I might be like Him. Even though I know I will not arrive in this life, that is the last excuse I can think of for giving up.