Straining Toward the Goal

 

Straining Toward the Goal

[12] Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. [13] Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, [14] I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. [15] Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. [16] Only let us hold true to what we have attained. (Philippians 3:12–16 ESV)

As I reflect on the year, as many of us are prone to do at the changing of the calendar, I was thinking of what 2024 was about for me—the new things that entered in and the things it was time to let go of.  One of my favorite new things was hiking.  Though I’ve always hiked, a group of adventurous ladies who I’ve been doing life with for many years, focused on doing some bigger, longer hikes regularly.  It is a running joke at this point when we get together that I don’t get to say when we’ve peaked, because during our first big hike, which ended up being 12 miles instead of 10 round trip, I kept saying “I think we are there,” when everyone else could see there was a hill to climb up ahead.  Maybe I really wanted to be done and I couldn’t see there was miles yet to walk.  

I guess I’ve always been focused on the next peak, the next goal, the next accomplishment.  Sociologists have observed  that children of alcoholics typically fall into patterns of behavior and find a role to play in the family—some scapegoat and become the one to blame, some the mascot, who use humor to defuse the situation, some act lost and try to remain invisible.  I was the responsible one, the perfectionist, and have been very successful academically and professionally.  For me to function, I always had to have another challenge to conquer, that I could focus on, that I could strive for. 

Well the last few years have been the kind of hard marked by grief, loss and change, and I’ll admit I cashed in a lot of my spiritual bank account.  Like my declarations of a false summit, I have really wanted to be done in a lot of ways…done in my job, with my family, with my friends, and sometimes even with my faith.  It can all get too hard.  A season of putting out too much and not getting much back; unbalance and fatigue ruled the day.  I stopped praying and reading my bible.  I went to church and small group but felt like an observer in some respects.  I stopped making time for fellowship, where I decided to be fully known.  I served, in a leadership role teaching women, but felt like a phony.  

Despite my spiritual stupor, hope remains because God is faithful when we are not.  If we are His, He somehow brings us through the barren and harsh places of incline on the journey and though we have far to go, quickens our step.  We can never quit-though we may pause and catch our breath, the Holy Spirit renews us when in our frail humanity we would settle for not there yet.  

What does God want to do in me in this fresh new year?  I think to keep pressing.  Keep going.  Get back to the disciplines of faith through as Dallas Williard says, grace-driven effort.  I have been pretty lazy and doing Christian things seemed too exhausting and didn’t yield much fruit.  

At one point in counseling a few years back, my therapist said it was good for me to not produce.  That I needed to just be for awhile, sad, in the background of my life, observing and reflecting, accepting not changing.  I think that’s what I needed this year.  It was a year of transition for me with the players in my life moving to different positions on the stage.  There is new people on the board and I’m very different too.  By the grace of God I hope to be a little bit more like Jesus everyday and a little less like the scared little girl I was who had to be perfect to be loved, whose curated world came crashing down.  It takes us a long time to internalize that God has a better way forward and sometimes things are hard.  But in the hard we are transformed.  Wherever you are at, there is something new around the corner.  I have hoped the change was coming the last few years and wanted to see it so badly that I was wrong.  It’s because I wanted to stop but not yet where God was taking me.  

I’ve decided to keep walking uphill until He says I’ve arrived. 

Thank you for reading over the last 13 years.  Sometimes I put out content for you in my bible study series, sometimes devotionals where I highlight a truth in scripture, or sometimes like today, I just dump it all out on the page. 

My encouragement for you is this—dear reader, I don’t know where you are right now.  In the valley or maybe you’ve arrived at the next faith-summit.  I’m walking uphill but my spidey-sense tells me I’m closer than I was because I just don’t need to arrive anymore.  Know that where ever you are things will change and there is purpose in all of it.  You are being refined and changed in all seasons of faith, the heat of summer where you rest and enjoy the Lord, the decay of fall, where things prepare to die, the harsh cold of winter where your treasure is dormant and waiting, and the new promise of spring, where the abundance of fruit is within arms reach.  

I’ve decided I need to keep pressing, to attain the upward call of God and Christ Jesus and I’m not going to let my years of hard hold me back anymore.  I’ve not already attained it, I am not perfect because Jesus hasn’t come back yet.  Yet I long to be mature, and this passage challenges me to think like those who have weather much with the Lord—keep pressing forward.  You know what to do, just do it! You are ready to strain ahead  a little more.  It’s time to forget what lies ahead not because there isn’t lessons there, but because God wants me looking only at HIm.  He made me His own and for that He gets my everything. 

What does your year look like.  What has God done in you and what does He want to do?  What scripture drives you on?  What words will echo in your soul for 2025.  I’m with you.  Let’s go…take the next step, eventually you’ll get there.