Which Direction Is Our Focus?
In Philippians 3:14 Paul draws a comparison between our life and a race. What is behind is fine, but it is behind and unless our effort remains consistent in looking forward it has little bearing on the result of the race. A runner doesn’t place any stock in how many laps he’s done or in how well he has run them, only the number of laps left and what lays ahead matters.
What can keep us from experiencing the things that God has in store for us in the future?
One thing that can keep us from moving forward is worry. If you’ve been in our living room then you know that we have a rocking chair. Somewhere I read that a rocking chair is a lot like worry. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Somebody said, “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through our minds, if encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” Has that every happened to you? You start worrying about something and pretty soon you discover that it has consumed all your other thoughts.
Let’s put it into perspective. There are approximately 773,672 words in the Bible. The word worry is used 13 times. Compare that with trust that is used 126 times, faith used 270 times, believe used 226 times and love used 551 times. If you want to narrow it down even more, of the 13 times that worry is used, 11 times we are told not to worry and of the other two one asks the question “Why do you worry” and the other one says “Tomorrow will worry about itself.” However too often we are like the old lady who said, “I always feel bad when I feel good, because I know that I’ll feel bad after awhile.” The same Bible that says, “do not kill” also says, “do not worry” because worry kills. It kills our spirit. Being possessed by worry is saying, “I don’t believe that Father can handle my problems.”
Another thing that paralyses people in running the race is the fear of failure. The biggest challenge for most is that the fear of failure becomes the fear of trying. With every attempt comes the possibility of failure. As we move forward in life it is so much about the need to look beyond past failures to future successes. We have all failed at one time or another in our lives and we should know that failure is not defeat. The only impact that yesterday’s failures should have on today’s endeavors is that they should have made us wiser.
Along the same lines our successes can keep us from moving forward. When the runner is a lap ahead of his opponents he doesn’t stop to gloat, the race isn’t over until the very end. Too many sports teams have gotten lazy only to have an almost certain victory snatched out of their grasp by a hungrier team. No matter how good we think we are doing we are never good enough to stop trying to become better. Victories need to be used just as failures are, as simple lessons of life. If we learn not to do a particular thing because it results in failure then we have to learn to follow our successes to greater success. The challenge is to never forget that just because something worked well yesterday doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work just as well tomorrow. New ideas and concepts can quickly become dated and traditional. We can’t hold onto the old simply because it is old, nor can we embrace everything new just because it’s new. As a community of God followers we exist to minister to the larger community and as so as the needs of society change so must what identifies us change. We don’t change the message, but we may need to change the medium by which we communicate that message.
In many ways the failures and also the victories of yesterday need to be left there as we push onto the new victories of tomorrow. Let’s never become one of those churches that are always talking about the good old days, and how good God was back then, and what a perfect world it used to be. It’s not enough to let go of the past if you’re not ready to stretch ahead and grab hold of the future that God has in mind.