Philippians 3:10-21

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. ¹²Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³Brothers, 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, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.¹⁵All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. ¹⁶Only let us live up to what we have already attained ¹⁷Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. ¹⁸For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. ²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.


So often things of the past can hold us back. Often the issues that haven’t been dealt with, can be a stumbling block and a hindrance to what God does in us now. If only we can see beyond the here and now. If only we could see what God can do in and through us, we would desire to press on through.

As Paul says here, he hasn’t already attained this, but he presses on – forgetting what lies behind and strains forward to what lies ahead. We need to have a more ‘eternal’ way of thinking. We know that this world is not our home. We can’t even take our human body with us when we die. Everything will be changed. Everything will be new. Our homeland is in heaven with Jesus. Our home here on earth is only a temporary residence. If we could truly grasp this – we would realize the unimportance of so much in our day-to-day life. This can be a hard concept – because none of us can really understand what heaven would be like. None of us have been there. We haven’t seen it; touched it; smelt it; experienced it in any way. We may get small glimpses now and then – but that is nothing in comparison to what it would be like. I believe if we could just see what has eternal value in what we do and say, it can be transforming. Knowing this can help us to ‘press on’ with God. To ‘press on’ to receive the breakthrough we so desire. To ‘press on’ to be more Christ-like. To ‘press on’ despite the odds stacked up against us. For nothing else the world has to offer is as important as pressing on in God.