Week 2 - One Thing I Do

”… one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14, NASB)

On New Year’s Eve 2007, Carmelites gathered in the Peace Sanctuary to bid farewell to 2007 and to welcome 2008. Twenty-one people came forward to testify of God’s goodness through the year and we were reminded that our God watches over us unceasingly. As Christians, we want to be good stewards of what the Lord has entrusted us with. We should therefore consider carefully how we live out the next 12 months of the New Year. How can we ascertain that this year will be a year of fruitfulness in God’s sight? What one thing would you do in the coming New Year that will make your life count for the Lord?

I believe what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Philippi will help to make this year pleasing to the Lord. Paul wrote, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Here, Paul seems to be telling us to do three things, and the first is to forget the past.

Leaving the Past Behind

When we look back over the last 12 months, what do we see?

I am sure we would have good and bad memories of the past year. Perhaps there were things that did not turn out right. We may wish to turn back the clock and start all over again! There are things, I am sure, that we wish we could have done differently. Perhaps our devotions and Quiet Time suffered neglect. We have made mistakes and there is nothing we can do to change the way things have turned out except to confess them to the Lord.

We would have many good experiences, too. We remember the good things: times when we were happy. Good memories are truly precious. It is great to be able to recollect them and play them back in our minds again and again. They bring a smile to our faces. We can certainly thank God for these positive experiences.

The past can teach us many things about living in the present. The past is like the rear-view mirror in our car: we glance at it ever so often to make us aware of what is behind us.

However, the past has a dark side as well. The past can be a prison. It is possible for the past to hold us in bondage. So how do we deal with the dark experiences of our past?

Some people relive the past. They recount past events in their minds over and over again. All the negative emotions that they felt then, they now feel afresh again.

Some people surrender to the past. They decide to be prisoners of the past and allow the past to shape them. To relive the past and to surrender to it are sure ways to be defeated in the present.

What was Paul’s strategy? He urges us to forget the past, to leave behind what is past. But what is it that we are to forget? We are to forget all the sins that we have already confessed to the Lord. If we confess our sins, God has promised that He will blot them out and cast them far away. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us,” says the psalmist (Psalm 103:12 ). He will remember them no more.

Listen to what Paul says, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind…” Paul is saying that the way to deal with the past is to put it behind us. We are to forget it so that it no longer controls and binds us. Unless we let go, we will always be on a leash. We stride forward in our Christian life, only to be pulled back time and again.

You may say, “Well, it’s easier said than done,” and you are right. However, by God’s grace, it can be done. You see, Christ can liberate us from the past. Christ can set us free from the bondage of guilt and sin. There is nothing in our past too great for God to handle. There is no sin too grave for God to forgive. Christ can enable us to release the past and move on to what He wants us to be in the present. He can enable us to avoid living in the “what has been” and live, instead, in the “what can be.”

Reaching Forward to What Lies Ahead

So after leaving the past behind, we are ready to move on and reach for what lies ahead. Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul again, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead…”

Paul is not merely reaching forward in his mind; neither is he waiting to be pushed into action. He said, “I press on…” He acted on it. In other words, he has already put it into action.

The Christian life has been likened to a walk, a race and a fight. These are all action terms. When Jesus calls us, He wants us not just to merely give Him intellectual assent, but to follow Him as we live out our lives. It is possible for a person to believe in Jesus at just the intellectual level. You can hold up a belief without making a life commitment to it. That is not biblical faith. Faith in Jesus means putting our trust in Him. We need to trust Him wholly with our lives and commit ourselves to live for Him daily.

Paul says he is reaching forward to what lies ahead. The picture we have here is of someone stretching forward, like a runner in a race, pushing to win, not merely to finish, and to hear the Master say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

God truly has a plan for our lives, one that we can look forward to with much expectancy. So let us begin to look towards the new year with hope.

Looking Up

Lastly, we are to look up. As we forget what lies behind and reach forward to what lies ahead, Paul tells us to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” To look up is to heed the call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul is a man who is not content with forgetting what lies behind. He is not simply reaching forward to what lies ahead; he is giving his all to the task entrusted to him by the Lord. He is determined that nothing should deter him. The upward call of God in Christ Jesus is Paul’s goal. This is the thing that he is pressing toward. This is the one thing that he does. The “One thing I do,” he proudly confessed.

The picture that often helps me understand what Paul is saying in these two verses is that of a man climbing a mountain. You see him hanging from a cliff by a rope. He inches his way up. He lets go of the rope below and reaches upwards for the next section of the rope above. Slowly, he lifts himself upward towards his goal, which is the top of the cliff. There is only one thing in his mind: the goal of reaching the top.

With so many distractions in this world, Paul’s advocacy to forget the past and press forward to the goal of fulfilling God’s purpose for us is timely. His focus on doing the one thing that matters, the accomplishment of God’s mission for him (Philippians 3:10-11 ), is an inspiration for us.