Philippians 3:12-14

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Let's go ahead and be seated and if you have your copy of God's Word with you,

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I encourage you to open it up to our study here in Philippians. We're in chapter 3.

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Today we're going to be looking at verses 12 -14. Philippians chapter 3, 12 -14.

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Paul says, Not that I have already attained this, or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me

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His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing

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I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

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

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This is the reading of God's Holy Inspired Word and just as we do every week, let's go to Him and pray that He would give us eyes to see and ears to hear through the empowering of the

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Holy Spirit. Dear only Father God, Lord we thank You. We are so grateful to You for Your blessings on us.

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Lord, we are so undeserving of Your blessings and the greatest blessing that we have from You is one that we are so, the most undeserving of, which is

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Your Son and Your love that You've bestowed on Your children. And as Your children, we're coming before You right now opening up Your Word.

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So God, I pray that You would give us ears to hear the truth. Guard me from error as I speak.

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Help me to speak only truth from Your Word. Lord, I pray that we would leave today being doers of the

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Word, not just hearers only. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, this week I googled, how do you live the

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Christian life? How do I live the Christian life? I figured if I'm going to be preaching every week, I better figure that out, right?

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How do I live the Christian life? Well, it's funny, Google had no shortage of answers for me and information for me.

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And I found it interesting that the first few things that came up as I searched this were things like ten steps to being a better Christian.

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Ten steps to living the Christian life, yet the thing that was interesting was in most of these, well really all of them that I searched, there was one key element missing for the most part.

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There was a lot of things to do, a lot of things that we are called to do and ways to be obedient, but very little about the object of our obedience.

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Very little about our Savior. And of course, a number of them, the very first thing was ask

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Jesus into your heart. That was the first list of things to do and even though that's not a biblical principle, at least they mentioned

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Jesus up front, but there was very little. They moved on into telling you how to do a list of things, but without the object of our obedience.

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Well, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and our love for our Savior, Jesus Christ. And so this got me thinking, if someone comes to me and asks, how do

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I live the Christian life? How am I going to answer them? What am I going to say? And so instead of going to Google for that answer,

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I went to the source, right? I went right here and I just did a really brief, quick overview study of what does

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Scripture have to say about living the Christian life? And I found it really interesting that for the most part, other than all of the precepts and all of the requirements that we are to do as Christians, but when it's talking about the

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Christian life and what it looks like, it's always given to us in imagery. It's always given to us in pictures.

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Things that maybe would help us and this earth understand just a little bit more.

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And I know I've mentioned it in the past few weeks just briefly. The Christian life is compared to things like a fighter.

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Someone boxing and preparing for a fight. There's a fight in the Christian life and the Christian life is compared to that.

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More often than not, the Christian life is compared to agriculture. Farming, which we live in a farming community, so it's fairly applicable to us, but I look around and I don't see any farmers here.

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Well, other than Brenda. Brenda is a gardener and so some of these agriculture things will mean something to her, but to a lot of us, we don't spend a lot of time in that world.

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Another way that the Christian life is compared is in war, about being a soldier. What does that look like?

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Well, someone that is preparing to be standing side by side going into battle together in this community as we gather today.

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And so a lot of these things give us this beautiful imagery and it does help us understand, but we also have to acknowledge that different generations and different times are going to see things differently.

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Just as I said, the agriculture. When the New Testament was written, most of the world was consumed in agriculture, so those principles would have carried a little bit more weight and understanding in the people's eyes.

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War was not something that was detached from them and far off. To us, we experienced war, but unless you've been a soldier, that's far off.

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We only see it in the news. So it's hard for us to really comprehend sometimes some of those things, but that's what

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I like about these verses today. These verses today that we're studying, they give us some imagery and they speak of the

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Christian life in language of athletics. And that's something I think all of us can comprehend, especially here in our country today.

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The West is fairly consumed with sports. All of our idols come from sports. All of our lives are consumed with it and I'm up here talking as if I know anything about sports.

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Just as a confession, I am the least athletic person on the planet, which combined with my desire to be the most competitive person is not a good combo.

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You really see my flesh come out there. So I don't understand sports as well as some others do, like Jeremiah of course, but I do understand the idea of competition.

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I do understand striving. I understand moving forward and trying to be better. And the language that's used in these next three verses is one of a race.

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One of a race. A race where there's a start. There's a start in it. And what's that new start?

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It's a new birth. When we start, that's our new birth. When we come into the faith, when Christ comes to us and reveals himself to us and when the

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Holy Spirit awakens us, we begin a race. We are now entered into this race and we have started right there.

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That's the start. The rules are what? God's Word. We have the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit and we can understand like what we're doing today, opening up God's Word and we see the rule book.

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Our progress in the race is spiritual growth. We grow and we know where we stand in that race as we look at where we are growing and becoming more like our

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Savior and being sanctified. And then ultimately, there's a prize.

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Just like any good race, there's a prize at the end. There's a goal and what is that prize?

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It's Jesus himself. It's our Savior. The one that has redeemed us.

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The one that has placed us in this race is the prize at the end and that's who we're after. What better analogy for the

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Christian life than the one we're studying today, right? This is a perfect analogy for us. So, today

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I have only two points to the sermon. Last week I had five and I felt like that was a bit much for us to tackle, so I shot a little lower today.

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So, you only have two, but they might be two long ones. We'll see. You know how that goes. Now, the two things that I want us to see in this passage is, the first is a reality check.

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It's a reality check. If we want to know how to live the Christian life, there must be a reality check. And the second is a race to run.

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So, let's look at that first one, a reality check. Look at our passage, verse 12. Paul says, not that I have already obtained this.

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We'll stop right there. What's the this? What is he talking about? What's Paul talking about? What has he not obtained yet?

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We'll look back at verse 10 and 11 with me. This is what we talked about last week. That I may know him.

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That I may know Christ more. That I may know the power of his resurrection more.

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That I may share in his suffering more. That I may be like him in his death.

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That he would obtain or attain to the resurrection. This is what

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Paul is saying. I've not already obtained this. He's basically saying, I've just begun the race.

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I've just started. I've just started this race. I have not yet emptied myself the way

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Jesus did. I've not yet done that. I'm in the process of it.

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But he's saying, I've not yet achieved that. I've not yet emptied myself. I've not yet humbled myself as Christ has humbled himself.

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I've not become like Christ fully. I've not even yet realized the power of the resurrection to the fullest.

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We talked about that last week. That power of the resurrection. The same power that resurrected Christ from the dead through the

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Holy Spirit is indwelling in Paul. And Paul's obviously seen it because he is coming to the new birth.

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He's obviously seen it because he's seen miracles happen through the power of the Holy Spirit. He's seen things happen through the power of the

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Holy Spirit. But he himself is affirming, I've not yet even begun to understand it. I've not yet understood this.

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I'm not there yet. I've not even suffered the way Christ has suffered. The way my

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Savior suffered. I've not yet suffered. And this is Paul writing from prison. He's suffering.

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I've not yet suffered. And ultimately, he's not become obedient to the point of death the way our

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Savior did. This is what Paul's saying. This is what he's saying. I've not yet obtained this.

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I'm not there yet, brothers. I'm not there. And then he goes on there. He says, I've not obtained it yet or am already perfect.

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I love the way Paul writes. I love the language and the wording that Paul uses.

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There's this certain future perfection that's implied in this already, isn't there?

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Paul knows, hey, there's a certainty. I will be perfected. I will be like my Savior. I will be like Christ.

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I will be able to achieve and accomplish those things ultimately. That's going to happen. But Paul didn't always think this way, did he?

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Paul didn't always think that he hadn't yet arrived. Paul, back in verses 5 and 6, if you remember,

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Paul listed off his accolades of his previous life before Christ.

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And he thought that he had arrived at that point. He thought, I've achieved righteousness. Right there at the end, he says, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

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I thought I was blameless. I thought I had arrived. I thought that the race that we had started, that I had already started it and that had already made it to the finish line.

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But now there's a total 180. He's switching gears because he has seen the real thing now, hasn't he?

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He's seen the real deal. He's seen what he's supposed to be. He's actually physically seen the

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Savior and in the process he knows who the Savior is and now he knows, not only have

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I not made it to the finish line, I literally have just started the race. I've just started the process of this race.

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And if Paul says that his race has just begun and he's just beginning to look like his Savior, how far off must we be?

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Some of us guys were talking out in the parking lot about the fact that Paul is probably the greatest

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Christian that's ever lived. The greatest Christian that has ever lived and he is saying,

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I've not yet achieved this. I've not yet obtained this.

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I've not yet even gotten close to finishing the race at this point. I'm just starting.

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So I would challenge you, as I challenged, as the

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Holy Spirit challenged me this week, as I studied these passages, are you like Saul?

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Remember Paul's name was Saul before Christ came to him. Are you like Saul comparing yourself to those around you and thinking,

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I'm alright. I'm alright. You know, I'm a better person than my neighbor.

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I must be pretty far down the line in this race. I'm a better Christian than the deacon at that church down there.

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I've already achieved it. Or are you like the Apostle Paul who's seen the real thing and now know what you're compared to?

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And so there's an assessment. We must have a reality check. There's a reality check to the

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Christian life. I think that's what Paul is doing. He's identifying that in his own life as an example to us is that when we are understanding that the

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Christian life is a race, we need to be honest with ourselves as to where we are in this race.

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We need to be able to evaluate and come to the reality of where we are. Which leads us to our second point.

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It's the race to run. It's a race to run. A reality check and a race to run. So look on as Paul goes on there in that passage.

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He says that he's not yet obtained it or already perfect. But. I love it.

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I love that word in Scripture. It's one of the greatest words, right? But. But I press on to make it my own.

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To make it my own. What does Paul mean by pressing on? What does

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Paul mean when he says I push forward, I press on? Well, the word that Paul uses here for press on actually,

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I'm not going to go into the word that he used, but the word that he uses really just says that you are seeking out after something that is ahead of you.

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You're seeking diligently. Diligently, you are decisively after an object or someone ahead of you.

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But with the intent of catching it. You get that? Just press on.

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You're seeking after an object ahead of you. Think of it in the terms of a race. There is someone ahead of you and your intention is to get a hold of it.

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Is to catch it. It's funny because it's the same word that Paul uses over in verse 6 when he says that he was a persecutor of the church.

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It's the same phrasing that the Apostle Paul uses there. Because what was he doing when he was persecuting the church?

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What was Paul's whole intention? What did he do? He was pushing forward. He was pursuing

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Christians for the purpose of imprisoning them or killing them to persecute

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Christ. He was pressing on. He was moving forward to go after an object or a person in order to catch up to them.

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But he uses that same word here when he talks about this. That he's not already obtained but he's pressing on.

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And this obviously is where we get the imagery of a race. Because Paul knows that Christ is the object that he's after.

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And that Christ is so far ahead of him that he's not yet obtained it. Christ is so far ahead of him in this race that he's trying to obtain it.

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And Paul knows that he's just begun. And so why is he pressing on with such fervency?

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Why is Paul pushing forward with such an extreme perspective of what he's doing?

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Well look at the next part of the verse with me. He says, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

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You hear that? Why is Paul seeking out after Christ in this race with such fervency?

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It's because Christ has made him his own. We love him because he first loved us, right?

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Christ first loved us. Christ is the one that has pressed on and he's the one that has pursued us.

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He's the one that has pursued Paul. Think about Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul is doing what?

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He's pursuing Christians for the intent of persecuting Christ himself by persecuting

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Christians. That's his purpose. Paul is not going to find Jesus. He's not pushing forward for Jesus at the time.

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But as he's going down the road, what happens? Jesus comes. Jesus pursues him.

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Jesus comes after him. When he was running from Christ, he is being pursued by Christ himself.

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So Christ Jesus has first pursued him and so this is the reason that Paul, with such fervency, has decided that now that the race has begun,

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I will pursue Christ because Christ first pursued me. It's beautiful, isn't it? Think about you before you were in Christ, before you were awakened, that you were an enemy of God.

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Even if you don't realize it at this moment, you have to understand that you were God's enemy. You hated

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God. You hated who he was. But even in that,

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Christ pursued you. Christ sought after you with the fervency that we don't understand and we can't even comprehend because he will find his children.

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He will come after them. And that's beautiful and that's what Paul is saying. I have the motivation to go forward and to press on and to seek out after Christ because he has made me his own.

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What an example that we have in running this race. So how do we live the

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Christian life? How are we to live the Christian life? Well, if we look at Paul's example, it's not one of sitting back and relaxing, is it?

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We're not just here showing up to church on Sundays and never really engaging in any meaningful ministry.

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It's not a life that we're just sitting back and reading our Bibles and praying whenever we feel like it, is it?

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This isn't the Christian life. If you want to know what the Christian life looks like and what we're supposed to be doing, well,

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Paul's given us some really good imagery here. There's a battle.

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There's a fight. There's a race. And he's seeking. And he's pressing forward. And he's looking to Christ.

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And he's trying to be like his Savior. It's funny because Paul uses the same analogy in even greater detail over in 1

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Corinthians. As a matter of fact, turn there with me. 1 Corinthians chapter 9. We're going to be looking, starting in verse 24.

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1 Corinthians 9, 24. Paul says, Do you not know that in a race all runners run?

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But only one receives the prize. All runners run in this race, but only one receives the prize.

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So run that you may obtain it. Run that you may obtain that prize.

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Verse 25. Every athlete exercises self -control in all things.

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Think about that for a second. Exercises self -control in all things. This is what Paul's comparing the

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Christian life to. Every element of your life, every little detail, everything that your world is consumed with is all about this race.

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Because they exercise self -control in all things. He says, They do it to receive a perishable wreath.

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Something perishable. But we an imperishable.

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What's he saying there? What's our prize? It's Christ. Verse 26 he says,

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So, I do not run aimlessly. I don't run aimlessly.

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Most of us Christians today are living our Christian life pretty aimlessly, aren't we? We read our

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Bibles when we feel like it. We pray when we feel like it. We fellowship when we feel like it.

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Pretty aimless. We don't have any directive. We don't have any purpose behind it.

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Paul says, I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. This is not meaningless.

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He's preparing. He's preparing. His whole being, his whole entire purpose, his body, everything is geared and prepared and disciplined for this race.

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In verse 27, But I discipline my body and keep it under control.

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A buddy of mine years ago was into competitive body building.

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It was really interesting to watch those guys. I was the scrawny little guy in the corner of the gym with my five pound weights doing my dumbbells while I watched across and looked at these guys.

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But just watching these men and their regimen, their life, everything was surrounded around that.

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Their careers, every aspect of their life was consumed with this competition.

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Every Sunday night they would spend hours prepping all of their meals for the week. Every meal had a certain purpose in it.

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They had to get X amount of proteins, X amount of calories, X amount of this, X amount of that. They took pills to go to sleep.

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They took pills to wake up. They took pills to dehydrate themselves. They took pills to hydrate themselves. They took pills.

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They did all of this stuff and everything in their life was consumed with the idea of standing up on a stage in their underwear greased up and flexing for everyone so that they could get a trophy, a perishable wreath.

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That was their whole purpose and their entire world was consumed in it. They spent hours of the day at the gym.

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And this is just bodybuilders. Think of runners. Think of people that are preparing for the Ironman competitions and everything else.

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How much of their life has to be so consumed in preparing for this race, for this competition?

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And this is the same imagery that Paul is giving us as Christians. How many

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Christians do you know live with that kind of preparedness and discipline? I don't know a lot of them.

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There's very few that live with this kind of discipline, but yet this is our answer to how do we live the

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Christian life. This is what Scripture is telling us. This is how we live the Christian life. This is what it's compared to. This is what we're after.

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You know, Paul said to Timothy, over in 1 Timothy, he said, for to this end we toil and strive.

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Paul makes no bones about it with the language that he uses. We toil and we strive.

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This word for strive in the Greek, agonizome. You hear it in it?

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You hear our root word in it? Agony? There's agony.

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There's pain. There's strife. There's striving.

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We, as Christians, are called to pursue Christ with even greater intensity than the imagery we're given here.

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Because just as he said in 1 Corinthians there, they're after a perishable wreath. We're after something imperishable.

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We're after something greater. We're after something eternal. We're after our own Savior, the one that sought after you.

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That's what you're after. That's what you're looking towards. That's what you're training for. That's what you're preparing for.

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That's what you're waking up for. That's what you're going to bed for. That's what you're going to work for. Everything that you do is consumed and wrapped around this concept of preparing to go after Christ and know him more, isn't it?

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That's what we're called to do as Christians. But this requires great discipline.

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So I think the question here is, how do we do that? How do we live a life that is this disciplined?

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What does that look like? Well, for starters, I would say every good athlete has a trainer, don't they?

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They have a coach. They have someone that knows that sport better than them, that is preparing them, that is helping them.

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And so that, I would say, is one of the first steps. And to be honest, here at 12 .5, we are in the process,

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Jeremiah, I've been working on the process for the past few months of putting together a discipleship program here at 12 .5

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that can help facilitate that. That every person has a, quote -unquote, trainer, a disciple, somebody that they can look to and grow and understand the

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Christian life better. And then that leads us into some of the practical things that we're going to be doing, things that you already know you're supposed to be doing.

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But what do these look like? What does my prayer look like? What does Bible reading look like? What is fellowship?

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All of these things are just practical things, just like the list on Google that I mentioned earlier.

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They were all on there, and that was great. And these imperatives are great.

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But why are we doing them? That's the big question, is why are we doing these things?

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What's our purpose? Who are we doing them for? I think that's the question that has to be answered.

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That's why I said at the beginning they all lacked the object of our obedience. They were just things that you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do.

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And we find ourselves doing that often, don't we? If you're carrying out these spiritual disciplines for any other reason other than to know

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Christ more, well then we're doing it wrong. These spiritual disciplines are because you're striving and pressing forward to Christ.

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The one that is ahead of you. What's your motivation? It's to know

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Christ more, right? It's to know Christ with greater fervency.

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And so we discipline ourselves. We live our lives with great steadfastness.

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Look at verse 13 with me. Paul goes on here in verse 13 to further drive home the point that he's just begun this race.

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He says, brothers. I love that. It's almost as if Paul's coming in and he's grabbing him by the collar and pulling him in.

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He goes, listen, close. Come here brothers. Come here. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.

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Now we're reading from the ESV of course. I actually like the New American Standard Bible's version of this verse.

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It helps make it a little bit more sense. Let me read that to you. It says, brothers, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet.

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I've not laid hold of it yet. He's just further affirming this. Paul knows that he's not there just like us.

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Just like we are not there. You know, I mentioned a second ago we do our

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Bible readings. We do our prayer times. We have our fellowship. I think about that in my own self and I evaluate my own self and say, am

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I reading the Bible just for information? Maybe so that I can win a theological argument with somebody?

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Or am I doing it to check it off the list and say, you know what? I really need that promotion this week so if I read my

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Bible every day God's going to bless me there. What's my motivation there? Are you praying out of selfish motivation?

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We often do, don't we? Our prayers are so saturated in selfish motivation.

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We want things. We're like, God, help us here. Help us there. Pray for my neighbor's cat across the street.

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Whatever it might be. These aren't bad things to pray for but is that our motivation? Is that what we're praying for?

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Is fellowship something you're just checking off the list? Well, I came to church today. I was there.

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I fellowshiped. We all fall short in these areas, don't we? I fall so short in these areas but here's the wonderful thing.

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Here's an encouragement for you from the Apostle Paul. Paul knows that he's not there and just like the rest of us, he knows that his prayers are prayed out of selfish motivation sometimes because he's not like Christ yet.

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He might be striving for it but he falls short. He knows that his Bible reading isn't what it should be at times.

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He knows it. He knows that his fellowship is lacking at times. This is the greatest

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Christian that's ever lived, right? That gives me encouragement knowing that Paul falls short.

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He's affirming that I've not yet obtained it, brothers. Brothers, look at me. I've not yet gotten there.

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I'm striving. I'm pushing forward. I'm doing all the things that I'm supposed to be doing by moving forward but I'm not there yet.

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I don't know if you're anything like me but I tend to get discouraged if somebody, if I'm playing a game or playing a sport or running a race where there's someone so far ahead, there's no way you're ever going to catch them.

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And so my question is, how does Paul not get discouraged and throw in the towel? He knows how far back he is.

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He knows he's not catching Jesus. He ain't catching him. And so I think of it in those terms.

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I'm like, well, you know, sometimes we get as Christians, we get to this point where like you're hearing what I'm saying and you're sitting here and you're going, yeah, that's true.

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Yeah, that's the Christian life and I should be living that but I've learned over and over again I can't. And so you just kind of give up.

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I'm guilty of that at times. I just throw in the towel. What keeps Paul from throwing in the towel? I'll go on in the verse there.

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Look, he says, but one thing I do. One thing.

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This is the one thing that I do, guys. Remember, he pulls those brothers in close. Brothers, listen to me.

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I've not yet obtained it but one thing I do. Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

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Here Paul gives us a negative and a positive. He tells us there that any good runner knows that the worst thing you can do is to look back behind you and lose your stride.

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There's no reason to look back. There's nothing to look back to. You just lose your momentum.

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What's Paul speaking of when he says, forgetting what lies behind? What is he talking about?

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What's Paul talking about leaving behind, forgetting what's behind? Well, he could be forgetting his past failures.

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He could be forgetting his life before Christ where he thought he had righteousness of his own.

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He could be forgetting the times that he read his Bible out of selfish motivation or prayed for something selfishly.

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He could be forgetting the fact that a brother or sister has harmed him in some way and has hurt him.

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Forgetting the fact that his name has been slandered. He could be forgetting the fact that he lost his job because he stood for Christ.

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He's forgetting these things but he also could be forgetting the good things, right? He could be forgetting the things that he's accomplished or at least it seems as though he's accomplished.

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Paul, if anybody, could be looking back and saying, I'm the apostle of the Gentiles. Look at how the church has grown because of my ministry.

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He could be looking back to those things and that's an opportunity for Satan to cause him to lose his stride.

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We tend to do that, don't we? We tend to look back at maybe the things that harmed us or hurt us.

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We look back at maybe some slander that came our way, hurt our reputation. We look back at maybe some of the successes that we've had in the past and we lose our stride.

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We aren't moving forward, are we? Not the way we need to. We aren't pressing forward. What do you need to let go of this morning?

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What do you need to look back behind you and say, I'm forgetting that.

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I don't have time to ponder on that. I don't have time to focus on that. I don't have time to turn around.

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What do you have to throw back? Evaluate that in your life. Set it aside. What do you need to forget about and what's distracting you from moving forward?

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So not only does Paul give us a negative here saying, don't do that. I don't do this. There's one thing

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I do is I don't look back. Then he gives us the positive. He says, straining forward to what lies ahead.

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What lies ahead? What is it he's talking about? What is Paul pursuing?

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What is he after? Well, look at verse 14. He says,

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I press on. There's that press on again. Remember? Striving after something with the intent of catching it or someone with the intent of catching them.

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He says, I press on toward. There's the moving forward. He's not looking back. He's moving forward.

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The goal for the prize of the upward call of God. What is that prize?

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He goes on. He says, in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the prize.

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Christ himself is the prize. That's the ultimate prize, isn't it? To know him more. To know

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Christ more. This is how we live the Christian life is by pressing on. We're pressing on because we're seeking to be like our

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Savior. In order to be like our Savior, we're pursuing him. He may be so far ahead of us that it can become discouraging and we know our failures and we know we're only at the beginning of the race, but that doesn't negate the fact that we need to forget what's behind and we need to move forward and we need to press on with fervency.

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We need to discipline our bodies. We need to discipline our lives and move forward, forgetting what lies behind.

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Because, let me tell you, in a race, what's going to happen? You're going to fall. We all experience that, don't we?

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We fail. I fall so often that I get tripped up, but here's the beautiful part about our

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Savior. He's in that process. Instead of me sitting down on the road and saying, well,

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I've just lost the race and everybody behind me is going to be passing me and everything is going to be bad and I look back to my past and I get distracted.

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Instead of that, we have a loving Savior that has already run the race. He's already won the race. He's already accomplished the race.

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And then he comes up alongside of us and he says, son, stand up. I'm here. I know what's ahead of you.

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I know what the road is ahead of you and it's hard, but I've already conquered it. I've already accomplished it.

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Now look to me. Watch me. Look where my feet land. You put your feet there and you seek out after it and you follow me with everything you have because there's coming a day when you're going to be at the end of the race and you're going to share in this prize and it's going to be me.

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That's the Christian life, isn't it? That's the beauty of our Savior and what we're doing here.

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Don't be discouraged. Don't be overwhelmed. Don't be taken over by the past and the things that you have failed at.

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We're always going to fail, but praise God we have a beautiful and wonderful Savior that has accomplished the race.

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And then we get to share in His victory. Even if we come in last place, we still share in His victory in full.

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That's amazing. That's what Paul's talking about here. That's what we press on towards.

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So press on towards the goal, brothers and sisters. Press on. Push forward. Discipline yourselves for this race.