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"Pressing
On" March
10, 2002 Rev. Gary LeTourneau Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the
goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his
own. Beloved, I do not consider
that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I
press on toward the goal for the prize
of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think
differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you.
Only let us hold fast to what we have attained. Philippians 3:12-16 Well,
for the last several weeks my wife and I have been busily engaged in the task
that if we tell anybody what we're doing, they all look at us and knowingly sort
of groan and say, "Oh, yeah." We've
been getting our house ready to put on the market and sell.
We've been there eleven years, so we have eleven years' worth of stuff to
undo to make it presentable for a new buyer. I've
been thinking of--as I usually do when I'm very involved in a
project--"What does this mean and what does this say about life?"
I'm wondering if this might be true.
Let me try it out with you: The
house that people are going to see next week when our house goes on the market
doesn't look a thing like the house that was lived in for the last eleven and a
half years. The walls are spotless.
There's no evidence of toothpaste, or shaving cream, or anything you need
to live. We're miraculously
hygienic as a family. No dirt.
No dust. No blemishes.
Our children don't need toys anymore.
They content themselves by sitting quietly in the living room with their
arms folded, looking at the blank walls. (We've
taken down all the pictures.) You
know what I'm getting at. To sell a
house, that's what you do. And when
you buy a house, that's what you want to see.
But isn't that just an illusion and a myth?
Because the fact is that the new house we're moving to in Fort
Collins--as soon as we bring all of our junk in, guess what?
It's going to look pretty much like our old house did, only in a
different setting. Whoever buys our
house, after they bring all their stuff in, guess what!
It's going to look pretty much like an ordinary, lived-in house.
The metaphor, the illusion, is that if only we can change some big part
of our lives, then everything will fall into place and we'll be new people and
we will somehow have banished dirt and dust from our lives, and everything will
be picked-up and organized, and we'll be happy and content. When
we watch a television show, have you ever noticed you never see them cleaning or
dusting? The houses are always
perfect, and there's no clutter, and everything is like a designer designed
it--because they did. And the
reason is, they want you to focus on the acting of the drama, not on the clutter
that would be present in an ordinary house.
And on television, 22 minutes in a half-hour program isn't very long to
have a real problem, so instead we're presented with artificial issues which can
be presented, lived through, and solved in 22 minutes of a 30-minute program.
Or if it's an hour program, you have 44 minutes.
That's
not like the life I lead or you lead where life takes longer than 22 minutes or
44 minutes to resolve. You see, the
illusion is that somehow we can step into that kind of a life.
That we can just change enough of the right things and the life we
lead--which gets messy, and complicated and at times disappointing--well, it
will be different. So
I'm very grateful to have a passage like Philippians 3 (really, the whole Bible)
which comes forward and directly admits that that idea that life is somehow
going to be rearranged and made perfect, easy, and all-together, is just an
illusion. The apostle Paul is
talking about his relationship with Christ, that because he knows Jesus, he's
ready to throw his past away (all his credentials--that's just junk).
That in the present, the only thing that matters is knowing Jesus.
Then he says in verse 12 the honest, candid admission: Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the
goal; but I press on to make it my own In
other words, "This life with Christ I'm talking about, even for me,"
says the apostle Paul, "I've been describing the theory, not necessarily
the day to day practice. For me
it's work. And for me it's a
struggle. And I have to press on to
gain what Jesus has offered me." I
find that refreshing, because that's how my life is, and that's I think how most
of our lives are. So the apostle
Paul tells us what it is that his life is about and he invites us, at the end of
these verses, to consider living our lives in the same way. I
was thinking, if I wanted to live in a model home, what would it take to do it?
First, I'd have to get rid of all the junk.
Secondly, I'd have to dust and vacuum very regularly.
And third, I'd have to have a vision of what it is that I wanted it to be
like and keep pressing toward that vision. We
have, down the street from us on our little circle, a house that--it was
purchased I don't know, maybe eight years ago.
It was really in sorry shape. I'd
heard it had been repossessed by the bank.
It had an awful driveway that went almost straight up, with all kinds of
potholes and mud. It was just ugly
to look at. The siding was ripped
off one side of the house. I think
someone had started a project and it never was finished.
This family bought the house, and today that house is gorgeous!
Because they had a plan of steps for eight years.
It began with the driveway. Not
very glorious, but they tore out that old driveway and they put in a new,
beautiful concrete driveway. I just
marvel that someone had the foresight to do it and know how it would look.
The next year they made stone terraces around their hills.
Then they began to plant in them. I'd
see this family every summer, three or four times during the summer, have a
five-foot by ten-foot trailer (a pretty big trailer).
The nursery must have a sale or something. They'd come back and that thing would be stuffed
full--filled--with plants, shrubs, and little trees. Over the next two or three weeks you'll see the trailer
emptying out and all these beautiful plants, shrubs, and trees getting placed in
this terraced, landscaped rock garden of beautiful design. They've been doing this three or four times a summer for
eight year! Now, understand, all
the plants and shrubs we put into our house would fit in one third of that
trailer one time! So they've done
about a hundred times more landscaping than we have, and it shows! It's a beautiful house.
Then they started on that wall with the siding, then they fixed up the
garage. Now they've moved in to
remodeling on the side of their house. And
I realized several years ago when they bought that house, they had a plan for
it. It was a vision of beauty, and
of graceful living, and of gracious living. And they're achieving it.
It started with very basic things like tearing out a driveway and putting
in a new one. But it has become
beautiful. And
the apostle Paul says, so it is with our lives:
There's a vision for you and me which is--in its source that comes from
God's own heart. This vision is a
thing of beauty and of gracefulness. And
the apostle Paul is telling us how we're going to get there. He says in verse 13: This one thing I do: forgetting
what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the
goal for the prize of the heavenly
call of God in Christ Jesus. First,
"Forgetting what lies behind." That's
getting rid of the junk. That, for
the apostle Paul, might be in the past, some successes.
They can come back and trip us up. We
can become so infatuated with our past success that we no longer think we need
God or our relationship with Him in order to do what we want to do in life.
Paul says, "Forget about that." Sometimes it's our failures which come and trip us up, and
convince us in our heart that we're failures and that's all we're going to be,
and we quit trying. Paul says,
"Forget about that." A
week and a half ago, I made a phonecall to our garbage-hauler and made the very
pleasant discovery that they had special pickup days.
They assured me that we could take all the junk in our house and haul it
down to the end of the driveway and they'd come get it.
She said, "You know there's a minimum $25 fee."
I thought, "Is that all? To
get rid of it?" I don't know
about your basement, but let me tell you about our basement.
Every project we've ever done (and succeeded at or failed at), we have
evidence of in our basement. Early-on
in our custody of the house, we put in a parquet wood floor.
Well, you know, I've still got down there the parquet wood floor tiles
that were left over from ten years ago, because I thought maybe one would get
broken or something, and then I'd have it for repair. We put in a tile backsplash.
I have a little bit of all the tile that was leftover.
I have the grout that we put in between the tiles ten years ago.
I've never touched it, but I have it!
The glue to glue the tile to the wall--it's still down there along with
the special trowel that I've only used once in my life, to put the adhesive on. All that stuff's down there.
That's our successes, and the evidence of it. Then there's all the junk that, "You know, I might need
this . . . I might not . . . I can't make up my mind . . . Let's put it in the
basement and we'll see." I'm
embarrassed at the size of the pile of all this stuff out at the end of our
driveway, then I remembered that all our neighbors had similar piles as they've
gone through the same thing. Do
you know how great it felt when Wednesday, about 10 o'clock
that truck backed up to the driveway and a guy started throwing it in his
truck? Fifteen minutes later I walk
out and it's gone! All for a
phonecall and a $25 minimum charge. Wouldn't
it be great of all of life's problems could be solved with a phonecall and $25
minimum charge? But you know what?
For a Christian who follows Christ, we've got it even better!
What Jesus offers us on the cross--free forgiveness--we don't even have
to pay $25 for! We just say
"thank you" and we receive it. And
we get rid of the junk in our lives. That's
why the apostle Paul says we can forget about the past.
So that's the first step. Second,
I said if I wanted to live in that model house I'd have to dust, clean, and
vacuum regularly and frequently. I
think in my life that refers to the ongoing practice of the disciplines of the
Christian life--making sure my relationship with God is where I'd like it to be.
That I'm working on it. That
I'm receiving forgiveness, that I'm forgiving others.
That was really last week's sermon, about a present relationship with
Christ and knowing Him. But it's
important to remember that. And
then the third thing, I have to have a vision of where it is that I want to be
and where I want to go. For
Christians, that vision comes from God. Gordon
MacDonald spoke to a Promisekeepers convention five years ago and he wrote about
when he was a freshman in high school and his coach invited him to his home for
dinner that night: After the meal, Coach pulled out a notebook [writes Gordon
MacDonald] displaying my name on the front cover. He immediately turned to the back page which bore the heading
"June 1957." That was
three and a half years away from the night of that dinner. "Gordon," he said, "these are the races I'm
going to schedule you to run almost four years from now, and here are the times
you will achieve." I looked at
those times. Impossible!
They were lightyears away from where I was at that moment as a runner.
Then Coach began turning back the pages of that book, page by page,
showing the 42 months he had scheduled for workouts.
These were the gradually-accelerating plans for my increasing skill on
the track as the months and the years would go by.
He had a sense of direction and development when it came to my athletic
growth. And
you know what? In all lives, a
loving God has a sense of direction and development for your life as a follower
of Jesus Christ--and for my life. As
you look back through the years as time unfolds, what happens to all of us?
It becomes plain that in God's plans for every single believer, the goal
is that we become more and more like Jesus Himself, and that one day we'll be
together in heaven with Jesus as our brother and we'll have His character as our
character, and we'll be free of the junk, and we'll be free to embrace God and
to embrace each other openly, without any of the barriers that keep us distant
now. That's
the vision, and that's the plan. And
God, our Heavenly Father, is the coach who takes us through each step of life's
journey. And He's shaping us, and
molding us, and preparing us, to be like Jesus. Paul says, "I keep my eyes fixed there.
Forget about the past and fix on the goal."
Now, his image, his language, is of an Olympic athletic competition. He had in mind the runners of the Greek Olympics, who don't
look to the side, they look only at the goal, and run as fast as they can to
grab the prize which he says Christ Jesus grasped ahold of him to attain.
And that's what we want to do. Now,
we just had the winter Olympics and I was hoping to find a perfect illustration,
but I didn't. Instead I found it
from the Sydney Olympics from two years ago, the summer Olympics.
Let me close with this story about Eric Musambani, from Equatorial
Guinea. He was an unlikely hero of
the Sydney Olympic games. Twenty-two
years old, he had only learned to swim in January preceding those games.
He had only practiced in a 20-meter pool.
That's all he had available to him.
And that pool did not have lane markers.
He had never raced more than 50 meters.
By special invitation of the International Olympic Committee, under a
special program that permits poor countries to participate and to send athletes
even though they don't meet the customary standards of the Olympics, he and been
entered in the 100-meter men's freestyle swimming.
When
the two other swimmers in his heat were disqualified because of false starts,
Musambani was forced to swim alone. He
was, to use the words of an AP reporter, "charmingly inept" as a
swimmer! He never put his head
under the water's surface. He
flailed wildly to stay afloat, With
ten meters left to the wall, he virtually came to a stop.
[That's about how I'd do!] Some
spectators thought he might drown. Even
though his time was over a minute slower than what qualified for the next level
of competition, the capacity crowd at the Olympic Aquatic Center stood to their
feet and cheered the swimmer on. After
what seemed like an eternity, the African reached the wall and hung on for dear
life. When he had caught his breath
and regained his composure, Musambani said, through an interpreter, "I want
to send hugs and kisses to the crowd. It
was their cheering that kept me going." What
keeps us going? Jesus, our Friend
and Brother, cheering for us. Our
Advocate. Our Friend.
"C'mon! Let's go
together!" You and I can
be those who cheer each other wildly on, and that's what keeps us in the race. I'd
like to take a personal moment and say to you, my dear friends at Faith
Presbyterian Church, I've been eleven and some-odd years here and there's only
one reason I'm here today as your pastor. And
that's because so many of you have been so encouraging in cheering me on, and I
thank you for that on behalf of me and my family. I want you to know in Fort Collins you're going to have a
great cheerleader in prayer. I want
the very best for Faith Church--the very best future.
And God--I'm going to be praying that He lead you in the next steps where
you need to go, because we have a goal together:
the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
That's where we're being taken. Let's
pray. Thank you, Lord.
Thank you that you give us the freedom and opportunity to jettison the
past and to forget about it. To be
free of what binds us and restricts us. We
thank you for our successes, but we ask that we not become so taken by them that
we believe we are successes on our own. We
pray, Lord, that as we work through our failures, we will find the grace and
forgiveness which you so freely offer in your Son Jesus.
Lord, we thank you with Paul that one day it will all be clear how you've
been working in each one of our lives to make us more like your Son Jesus.
We look forward to that vision of heaven.
It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Rev. Gary LeTourneau Senior Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00 a.m. worship
service on March 10, 2002] |
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