Flora First Christian Church - Flora, IN

May 18, 2008

Philippians 3:12-18

My hunch is that our up-coming high school graduates have already received some gifts. Graduation gifts have changed a lot since many of us have graduated from high school and college; so I did some on-line research this past week. This year nearly 2.9 million Americans will graduate from high school. (“College Frenzy,” Alan Finder, The New York Times, March 9, 2008)) What are the top ten most popular gifts? According to the website www.about.com they are: 10. Pen and ink sets. 9. Apparel from a college or university a graduate will attend. 8. Digital camera. 7. Hope chest—the old is definitely new again. 6. Lap top commuters. 5. Commemorative coins. 4. PDA’s, which are held hand devices that store video clips, TV shows, movies, etc. 3. I-Pods. 2 Gift cards. There is a breakdown of the top gift cards which includes cards to tattoo parlors. Starbucks is the top selling gift card. And No. 1 is no surprise . . . hard cold cash—money.
For me the surprise of what was missing from the list from a couple of decades ago was books. This would include gift books that are inspirational and motivational. According to a number of major book sites, tens of thousands of books are still being purchased for graduation gifts, but with the millions of students graduating from high school and college, books just didn’t make the top ten. Top selling books spelled out how to achieve success. At graduation time, we turn our thoughts and minds toward the future and what it takes to succeed. Many think that the latest best-selling book will be the one to help them fulfill their dreams. The ironic thing to me is that many books on success are written by people who have no track record, but they wrote a book. If I want to learn something in a specific area of study, I want to hear from someone who has experienced and succeeded first hand. We learn much more about success in life from role models than we do from manuals.

So who is our role model? The Lord Jesus Christ is, of course. I believe next to our Lord would be the Apostle Paul. Historians generally attribute Paul for the planting of the church throughout the world and the establishment of Christianity. In the third chapter of his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes about succeeding in life. In the first eleven verses he dealt with his past. In today’s passage, he dealt with his present and his future. From these verses we can see the model for successful living. In this passage, he briefly explains three of keys to successful living.
Here I believe we first need to define successful living. The origin of the word success is tied to achievement in anything which is desired, planned, or attempted. Unfortunately when most of us think of success, we generally think in dollar signs and trophies. But that is not necessarily the true meaning of the word. Last week in the TNT Sunday School class, a quote from the material stated: “Don’t mistake wealth for success.” And I would add, don’t mistake “Success as wealth.”
Real successful living is about connections and relationships that are lived with fulfillment socially, emotionally, and spiritually. To our graduates: you have already succeeded in accomplishing a set of required skills. Graduation is actually the rest of our lives. We succeed when we live in unity and harmony with God, our families, our co-workers and the world around. So the question today is: how do we do that?
This is where we turn back to the Apostle Paul’s pattern for successful living. Here Paul had his own outline with three keys that we will look at this morning. Let’s take a look..

Paul states in verse 13 “This one thing I do, I forget what is behind me.” Paul is saying if he is going to be all God wants him to be, he’s not going to waste any more time on yesterday. Successful living involves learning to forget. In other words: Elimination—get rid of the past mistakes. That’s the No. 1 key in the outline in our bulletin insert.
In Isaiah 43:18 God is speaking when we hear the words “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing!” So how do you forget the past with its mistakes, sins, failures, things left undone, and things you wanted to accomplish?
To forget, actually means don’t let the past affect you anymore. Personally, this is hard! Sam Davenport still works on this. It takes a lot of discipline, a lot of trust and a lot of faith. But it is Biblical to do so. Included on the back side of your bulletin insert is a reading by Pastor T.D. Jakes of Dallas, Texas. I was given this about a month ago at a minister’s meeting here in Flora. I have found it helpful. My advice is to read this daily for a while. When past grudges, failures, and hurts come to us say: “Let it go. Lord, take it away.” Let this become a pattern.
It’s human nature to remember things we should forget and we tend to forget things we should remember.
When following Paul’s pattern, there’s two things we need to forget.
1) Our failures. So many Christians continue to rehearse things in their heart that God has long since forgiven and forgotten. I believe that one of Satan’s favorite games is to paralyze us with the past - to manipulate us with the memories.
Paul says “I learn to forget the past.” He didn’t sit around beating himself up, filling himself with self-condemnation for mistakes. Every one of us here has blown it at some time. Paul, of all people, had many regrets that could have haunted him. Before coming to Christ, Paul was a persecutor of Christians. He was the man in charge who gave the OK to have a follower of Jesus, named Steven, stoned to death. The scriptures tell us in Acts chapter 7 Paul enjoyed watching it happen. Paul faced his faults and forgot the past so he could get on with life.
Tears, regrets, and self-pity won’t change our past at all. We learn from our past to live more effectively.
2) We must learn from our successes and let go of them as well. It’s so easy to rest on our laurels and base our security on past performances.
The problem with success is that it tends to make us complacent and fills us with pride. Then we stop growing. Luke 9:62 (Good News) “Jesus said, ‘Anyone who starts to plow a field and then keeps looking back is of no use for the Kingdom of God.’” In other words, you can’t drive a car looking only in the rear view mirror. To live successfully, we must not live in the past with either our failures or our successes.
If all you do is forget the past, then you may just have amnesia. That doesn’t make you successful or effective. Paul’s model teaches us to look to the future. This is when he said: “But this one thing I do … straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal.” (Vs. 13) This is a goal oriented statement. Paul has a single priority: In Greek this is the word “one” with an exclamation point. Our second key value is CONCENTRATION: focus on the future.
In the present decade there is a lot of emphasis on multitasking, the art of doing several things at one time to stretch our time. However, most of us don’t do several things at one time well . Businesses that do things with excellence generally focus on one area of service or production.
What was Paul’s goal? In 2 Corinthians 5:9 he puts it: “So we make our goal to please Him.” There is no more rewarding goal in life than to please God. Paul wanted to be able to stand at the end of his life and hear Jesus say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant. You were faithful in a few things. Come into my joy.”
The question we must ask ourselves is: What am I living for? What is my goal in life? If you don’t know where you’re going, nobody else does either. What’s most important and where is God in this list of goals? If God is absent from our lives then we are out on our own. How scary!
When I was in seminary I was approached at the branch of my bank about opening up a credit card account. I wasn’t interested because I thought it sounded like a lot of time to gather up all that information and some of those around me said I wouldn’t get one as a student. That day was the first time I had heard the phrase said to me: “Absolutely nothing worthwhile in life happens without effort.” The statement means we get nothing in life without trying. The words Paul uses are: “I press on to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”(Vs. 12-13) Feel the intensity of Paul here, the determination. “Press on” in the Greek literally means “I over extend myself — I go for it with all I’ve got.”
Paul is saying that he’s not going to stop, give up, or quit. He wanted to finish the purpose for which God made him. The world is full of quitters, people who cop out at the drop of a hat. They give up on their businesses, their marriages, their kids, relationships, and dreams. Paul is saying: I want God’s best for my life and I’m going to complete what God’s called me to do. This brings us to our third key to successful living—DETERMINATION, never give up! The Biblical word for this is perseverance.
Paul summarizes this by giving three suggestions on how to persevere when we feel discouraged, as seen in verses 15-16. 1) First he says: “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.” All of us must face our faults, forget the past, look to the future, and fight to the finish. Paul was saying this is how mature persons live. He’s instructing Christians not to become complacent and not to become satisfied.
2) Second, he says: “And if on some point you think differently, God will make clear to you.” He’s saying: Be teachable. Stay open, God will teach you. The moment any of us are no longer teachable, we have stopped learning. The moment we stop learning, we stop growing. The moment we stop growing, we’re dead.
3) Third, Paul concludes with saying: “Let us live up to what we have already attained”. This means be persistent.
Do you know who said this? Who said: “I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And, that is why I succeed.” That was Michael Jordan’s experience. That’s persistence!
Winston Churchill, the noted British Statesman and leader during World War II, said that there are six words for SUCCESS. They are never, never, never, never give up. That’s great advice for all things in life.
Earlier in Paul’s letter we see a promise that God made to Paul. That promise is: “Be confident of this very thing. That He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion into the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) What God starts, He finishes. He doesn’t lead you out on a limb and cut you off. You do your best and God will do the rest.

These three key values in life are the foundations of living in Christ and must be the foundations of living for Christ and they are the values of this congregation. They determine the kind of persons we are and the type of church we seek to become. We are to be a church for imperfect people. Like Paul, none of us have arrived. Anyone who is perfect doesn’t need a church. Jesus said well persons don’t need doctors. Christ came for sinners–to reconnect persons back to God.
The church’s mission is to care more about our future than our past. I’m interested in what direction we are headed right now. That’s what matters. Amen!