How Did I Get Here?نموونە

Sometimes, in the moment of our distress, when we’re tempted to drop out of our spiritual race, we don’t always see what all is on the other side of our decision. But there are people God has assigned to us, people waiting to encounter Jesus’ mercy, grace, love, kindness, justice, and generosity. How important it is to stay in our race, trusting God that we’ll flourish if we do, impacting even more people with the Gospel.

I am convinced that we must live our lives with the same intentionality as the apostle Paul, so we don’t miss a single one. Paul ran with purpose. He was laser-focused and determined, so much so that at one point he said: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I PRESS ON to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I PRESS ON toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:8-15 NIV)

If we’re going to run our race in such a way that we obtain the prize, then we will have to press on through everything that is pressing on us and against us. We will have to press on from where we are to where God wants us to go. We will have to press on through our flesh, through our feelings, and through our pain. We will have to press on through our ambitions, our desires, and our expectations. We will even have to press on through our successes—after all, it’s the triumphs that oftentimes cause us to fall into apathy or complacency, pride or arrogance. In certain areas of our lives, in certain seasons of our lives, we will have to press play, pause, or stop, because pressing is how we will keep going.

When Paul said that we’re to press on, he’d been through far more than I can comprehend. His race was not easy. When he wrote to the Philippians, he had already endured being flogged five times with 39 lashes, being beaten with rods three times, pelted with stones, shipwrecked three times, and having spent 24 hours in open water. (I feel sure he would have passed Navy Seal Training with that one!) He had experienced danger from bandits, fellow Jews, and Gentiles alike. He knew what it was to go without sleep, to hunger and to thirst. He had endured being cold and naked. And still, he wrote the most positive, faith-filled anthem: “I PRESS ON.”

Except for a rare few in this world, life generally does not go as planned. It’s full of curveballs, unexpected challenges, loss, disappointment, grief, and turmoil. I would love to say there is always an easy path forward, but experience and Scripture tell us that is not how it usually is. We live in a fallen world, and trials are part of living in this world. Therefore, we will have troubles; we will make mistakes; we will experience disappointments; we will have loss; we will grow weary; we will want to ring the bell; we will want to quit. We will find ourselves in a place asking, "How did I get here?" But if we keep pressing on and building endurance, then we will have the strength to not drop out of our race. We will have the strength not to quit. We will finish our race! Strong!

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Adapted from How Did I Get Here? Finding Your Way Back to God When Everything is Pulling You Away by Christine Caine. Copyright © 2020 by Christine Caine. Reprinted with permission of Thomas Nelson Publishing. All rights reserved.