The Faith to Keep Going | Philippians 3:12–21
Today’s Episode: The Faith to Keep Going
Scripture: Philippians 3:12-21
Series: Philippians: The Unshakable Joy of Life in Christ
What keeps you going spiritually even when you feel like giving up? In this episode of Timeless Truth, Pastor Jim continues our series, Philippians: The Unshakable Joy of Life in Christ, exploring verses 3:12-21. We learn about spiritual tenacity and the importance of “pressing on” toward the goal, kept by the One who is holding on to us.
Pastor Jim’s Show Notes:
According to author Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up and Burnt Out, they would say “I was seized by the power of a great affection.” Thus describing a sudden, overwhelming experience of God’s reality and lordship in their life.
Paul does not press on in order to become Christ’s; he presses on because Christ has laid hold/seized him so, he already belongs to Christ. Grace precedes effort. And union with Christ fuels Paul’s perseverance and spiritual progress.
“The Christian life is not about perfection, but about direction. It is not sinless living, but a new disposition toward God.”
Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life, 2013.
That new disposition is that Paul knows he belongs to Christ and that Christ will hold him fast.
I have been inspired over the years by this stanza of poetry from Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
“One ship drives east and another drives west;
With the selfsame winds that blow;
Tis the set of the sails and not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from her poem Winds of Fate in a collection called Poems of Power, published in 1902
The same conditions may confront different people, yet their outcomes diverge because of the disposition of their hearts and the direction of their wills, the set of their sails.
In verse 13 Paul says, “forgetting what lies behind. ”This is not a call to historical amnesia or emotional repression. Rather, it is a refusal to let past failures OR past successes define the present.
“There is nothing more tragic than a Christian who is living in the past—either in past sins that have been forgiven, or in past experiences that can never be repeated”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression.
The gospel frees us from being crippled by regret, shame, or wistful nostalgia.
“The gospel always produces a pattern of life. Where there is no pattern, there is reason to question whether the gospel has truly been received.”
Dick Lucas
And captures the pastoral warmth of this hope:
“We’re not shopping for the best deal or the latest thrill. We’re waiting for Jesus to make everything right.”
Eugene Peterson, The Message
Waiting, in Paul’s mind, is not passive. It is active, expectant, resilient, filled with inexhaustible hope and unshakable joy. And what are we waiting for? Not escape from this world, but transformation while we live within it.
“Heaven is not simply our destination; it is our present homeland. We live now under its rule, shaped by its values, sustained by its hope.”
J. A. Motyer, The Message of Philippians
“I am less reaching for God than recognizing, at times, that God is holding me.”
Miroslov Volf, Glimmerings: Letters on Faith between a Poet and a Theologian.
