Press on Toward the Goal in 2002

Pastor Jody Hill of Deerfield Friends Church, encourages his congregation (and the wider family of Friends) to "press on" during this next year. There is a race set before every believer. If you accept this race, you will find yourself in pursuit of a goal established by Jesus before the foundation of the earth. He knew what course we must take in life because he constructed the course, providing us with an immortal challenge reaching to the heavens.

Ted Engstrom, in The Pursuit of Excellence gives us a few examples of those who have entered in this race: "Cripple him, and you have Sir Walter Scott. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Subject him to bitter religious prejudice and you have a Disraeli. Strike him down with infantile paralysis and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt. Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he will never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, who set the world's record in 1934 for running a mile in four minutes and 6.7 seconds. Deafen a genius composer and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a George Washington Carver, or a Martin Luther King, Jr. Make him the first child to survive a Nazi concentration camp, paralyze him from the waist down when he is four, and you have an incomparable concert violinist, Itzhak Perlman. Call him a slow learner, 'retarded,' and write him off as ineducable, and you have an Albert Einstein."

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, exhorts us to avoid relapsing, or regressing into a state of former living. He wrote, "...I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear brothers and sisters, I am not all that I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven" (Philippians 3:12b-14) NLT.

Jesus invites all of us to participate in this race. We must not look behind in fear and frustration, but "press on toward the goal" that Jesus has marked out for us in the rule book (God's Word). There are definite principles to keep and specific obstacles (sins) to avoid. There are training patterns (spiritual disciplines to be practiced). Throughout the new year, we encourage you to explore the master Game Plan (God's Will) for our spiritual lives and move forward in victory. Paul wrote Timothy saying, "Spend your time and energy in training yourself for spiritual fitness. Physical exercise has value, but spiritual exercise is much more important, for it promises a reward in both this life and the next" (1 Timothy 4:7-8).

Taken from Deerfield Friends Church Newsletter