Phip 3: 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Like all
men, Paul also had his weaknesses and failures. In his past while he was a zealot
for the temple, he was one of the most notorious persecutors of the Christians.
He was arrogant, obnoxious and generally a violent man. However after Jesus had
personally appeared to him and gave him a calling to bring the gospel to the gentiles,
Paul had a complete turn over and became a whole new person.
In this
letter to the Philippians in verse 13-14 Paul wrote; I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I
do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on
toward the goal to win the prize.
Paul did not
look back and allow his past failure to weigh him down with guilt. No one can
go back to the past and undo whatever mistakes they have done. Another way of
putting it is we cannot rewind the clock anymore. Just like sometimes we adjust
the hands of the clock by rewinding it backwards, that is not possible in life.
We cannot
revisit our past anymore, there is no point crying over spilled milk, we need
to look forward and look to the future. In our age, we cannot look back to the
days of our youth; we cannot try and do what we did when we were young. Now we
are older, we need to act more maturely and prepare and plan for the days
ahead.
In the case
of Paul he relates this vision of the future as a parallel to running the race
as an athlete. Every athlete has only one aim and that is that he may be the
winner in the race and to win the prize.
This must
also be our aim and purpose as a Christian that we may also run the race of our
life for the single purpose of winning the crown of glory and also our
inheritance in heaven.
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