FBC Morning Light – July 6, 2022

Well, good Wednesday morning to you. Here we are in the middle of the week, and let me ask you this today.

What are you after? What are you striving for? What are you pressing forward for?

There is a tendency among some professing believers in Christ to sort of rest on their laurels.

I've met a few people in my years of pastoral ministry who don't go to church, they don't read their

Bibles, they don't have really any kind of a Christian life, if you will.

They just live like everybody else lives. And I've talked to them and I've asked them, you know, do you think you're a

Christian? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm definitely a Christian. What makes you think you're a

Christian, I asked them. Well, because, they may say something like this, when I was a little kid

I went to church and I remember I prayed a prayer one time. I talked to a lady one time, tried to get her and her children to come to church, and she said to me, oh yeah,

I'm a Christian. I went to Sunday school on a bus, and she told me the church in northern

Indiana where she went on this bus, and she said, after one of the bus rides,

I prayed a prayer and asked Jesus into my heart. The woman hadn't been to church since she entered into adulthood, and she was now middle -aged and had several children.

There was another individual, a woman I ran into years ago at the dry cleaners.

She worked at the dry cleaners, and I got to talking with her and told her I was a pastor at such -and -such a church, and she said, oh yeah,

I'm a member at such -and -such a Baptist church. I said, oh, you are, okay, I'm glad to hear that.

And then she went on to explain that the job at the dry cleaner was just a part -time job.

She had another part -time job. I said, oh, what's that? She said, well, I work at the Mouse's Ear, and I said, the what?

What's that? I didn't have any idea what she was talking about. She said, oh, well, it's a strip club down by the airport.

I said, oh, okay, and you're a

Christian? She said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I go to church, I go to church. So there are far too many people who profess to be

Christians who are like that. They're resting on the laurels of their past.

They grew up in a Christian home. They graduated from a Christian school. They prayed a prayer as a child.

They were baptized at one point or another, and they know all this stuff about the

Bible because they went to Sunday school or whatever. They look at the past, and they're resting on their laurels.

Well, the Apostle Paul didn't do that, and he tells us in Philippians 3, he says, look, it's not that I have already attained or I'm already perfected.

I haven't arrived. In other words, Paul says, he says, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which

Christ Jesus has laid hold of me. He says, brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended.

I do not consider myself to have arrived. But one thing I do, and then this is what he says, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward for those things which are ahead,

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

He wasn't resting on his laurels. He wasn't looking back on some religious experience or some religious education that he received in the past.

No, he says, I'm forgetting that. I know I'm a believer in Christ. I know

I'm a follower of Christ. I'm pressing on to know him better. I'm pressing on to be made more and more into the image of Christ.

I'm pressing on that I might apprehend that for which he has apprehended me. I'm reaching toward that goal.

I'm pressing forward. So Paul had a forward look.

He was pressing forward to some goal, some objective, and that goal and objective was complete

Christlikeness. What are you pressing forward for? What are you pressing toward?

When it comes to the Christian life, are you simply looking back and resting in your laurels?

Or are you pressing on to know Christ better? Are you pressing forward to become more and more like the

Lord Jesus Christ? What are you pressing? Our Father and our God, we thank you for this challenge today because,

Lord, it can be the temptation on any of us to just be satisfied with our faith and our profession of faith and how far we have grown in that faith.

We need to keep on growing. It doesn't matter whether we're seasoned saints who've been believers for 50 years or we were just converted two months ago.

We need to keep on keeping on and keep on growing and pressing toward that mark of the upward call in Christ Jesus.

May we press forward, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well have a good rest of your hump day, middle of the week day, and I trust