PRESSING
FORWARD
BREAD
12 Not
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. 13 Brothers, 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, 14 I press on toward the goal to
win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14 (NIV)
11 When I
was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a
child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
1 Corinthians 13:11 (NIV)
62 Jesus
replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and
looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9:62 (NIV)
23 Whatever
you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will
receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are
serving.
Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV)
24 Do you
not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run
in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict
training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a
crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I
do not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after
I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (NIV)
BUTTER
“A person with
half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the
smoothest of roads.”
Thomas
Carlyle
“Redemption
does not only look back to Calvary. It
looks forward to the freedom in which the redeemed stand.” Leon
Morris
“On several
occasions the New Testament makes clear that cheap grace, the attempt to be
justified through faith in Christ without commitment to sanctification, is
illegitimate and impossible. The thrust of these passages is not really
that we should add works to our faith, as if it were possible to advance one
step forward into faith but to hesitate before adding a second step into
holiness. Faith and repentance are not separable quantities. To
have faith is to receive God's Word as truth and rest upon it in dependent
trust; to repent is to have a new mind toward God, oneself, Christ and the
world, committing one's heart to new obedience to God. Obviously these
two factors are so interwoven that they are experienced as one, so that the
condition of justification is not faith plus repentance, but repentant faith.”
Richard Lovelace
“He suffers my happiness here to be
imperfect, that so I may be pressing on to that place
where I shall be perfectly happy forever.”
K. H. Bogatzky
HEART SAVOR
- · I am to press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
- · Earth is not my home, heaven is.
- · I am to work as unto the Lord with all my heart, solely trusting in Him and leaning not upon my own feeble understanding. In all my ways I am to acknowledge Him and He promises to make my path straight.
