Here we are on a new adventure. As our church gets ready to launch a new website, one of the things I wanted to do, at the suggestion of my youth pastor, is write an almost daily blog. Hopefully, this blog will allow you to see into my heart at how the Lord is working in me and it could be an encouragement to those of you who will read it. I look forward to dialoguing with you because I believe it could be a great encouragement to me to here your responses. I want you to be able to comment and share as you are touched, encouraged, intrigued, or upset by the blog posts.
My chief goal in all of this is that God would be glorified. Reaching for what lies ahead comes from one of my favorite passages in all the Bible, Philippians 3:7-21. The apostle Paul is challenging the church at Phillipi by giving a brief testimony of his life. Paul had everything going for him as a religious man.(v 4-6) After meeting Jesus though, all of his accomplishments were for nought, anything he had was rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Chirst Jesus as Lord. Paul wanted to know Christ more in every way. He was willing to give up all he had for the glory of fully knowing Christ, and attaining the prize which was laid out before him. In verse 13, Paul says he is forgetting what lies behind, and he was reaching for what lies ahead. What was it that was lying ahead? "The goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
What this world has to offer us today is nothing in comparison to what Christ offers to us here and in the hereafter. As for me, I will reach for what lies ahead. Although I am frustrated many times by my want for the world, my deep desire and hope is that I will steadily lose my taste for this world and continually be consumed by a passion for the things above.
I hope this blog can be a blessing to you and others in the days ahead.
In Christ,
Brad