"I am still not all I should be...."

Phil. 3:13-14  No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.

None of us are all that we should be.  We all fall way short of being the godly person we should be.  This is true because we are in constant warfare with Satan.  He relentlessly works against us, trying to get us away from God and keep us away.  We live in the flesh and do not have the spiritual stamina to resist him all the time.  No one is so strong spiritually that he is going to get it right all the time.  We will never get to a point where we don’t have to diligently take care of our souls.

We often fail in our quest for godliness, but we dare not dwell on our failures.  We can’t undo what we have done, but Christ can.  When we confess our sins to Him, He takes them away from us and gives us pure hearts, hearts that are whiter than snow.  Instead on hanging onto our failures and living in regret, we focus on eyes on Jesus.  As long as we are looking behind us at what we have done, we can’t see Jesus who is before us. 

The key to keeping our eyes focused on Christ is to accept His forgiveness and to forgive ourselves for what we have done.  We learn from our failures and press on so that we don’t do them again.  The more determined we are to keep pressing forward, the more successful we will be at finishing well the life of faith.

Jesus is waiting for us in heaven.  In order to get there we must give our faith our very best effort.  We must be determined to overcome in our daily battles with our temptations to sin.  We must never give an inch to Satan knowing that if we do he will take a mile. 

Staying consistently in the Word, praying much, and diligently living out the Word enables us to strain for that which awaits for us in heaven, Christ Jesus our Lord.