09-01-13 The Third Crucial Attitude

We are in the process of pulling together

what is perhaps the most powerful life statement

given to us by the Apostle Paul

found anywhere in his writings.

It’s found in Philippians 3:7-16,

and as we’ve walked our way through these verses

we’ve seen Paul offering us

those basic life attitudes

that formed the foundation for his own life

and offers us the perfect pattern for our own lives as well.

It begins with Paul saying,

Phil. 3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord...

And from there Paul then goes on

to share with us

the pillars upon which his remarkable walk with God had been built.

We’ve spend a number of weeks in this passage,

but then last week

I shared with you

the first two of three core attitudes

that, taken together, could help us hold on to what Paul is offering us here.

And this morning we’ll look at the third.

But just to help us get our minds back into what Paul has for us here

let me remind us of the first two attitudes we’ve already looked at.

#1. The first life attitude is summed up in that first phrase in verse 8:

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, ...

If I were to rephrase that first attitude for us

I would say simply, don’t be afraid to bet it all on knowing Him.

The first great truth

I see being illustrated through Paul’s life in this passage

is that one of the great keys

to Paul’s success in life

is that he never attempted to live in two worlds.

For him that meant that

once he turned to Christ

he did not attempt to continue to nurture and cultivate acceptance

and prominence

with the leadership of the nation of Israel.

For us, I think I would say it like this:

rather than attempting to use Christ

to achieve our goals,

we are called to let Christ

and His leadership in our life BE our goal.

It is the difference between beginning the day by saying,

“Lord, here’s my list...please bless it.”

and saying,

“Lord, here’s MY list,

but what I really want is YOURS.

Please, show me Yourself

and Your leadership this day.”

And I do wish so very much

that what I just said

didn’t sound like a religious platitude,

but the truth is that I simply don’t know how else to say it.

You see, whether we allow ourselves to see it or not,

our Creator God is...He just IS.

He is exactly who He says He is,

and because He is

He is the ultimate reality

we are called to interact with every day of our lives.

And the more we accept that truth

and then choose to consciously realize that we are living in His presence,

trying to understand each step what it means to live in submission to His Spirit within us

the more this thing we call life will begin to make sense.

Never in my life have I been more keenly aware

of the intensity of the warfare we face each day of our lives.

Each day we must once again reclaim the truth about our God

and His love for us

and His life through us,

trying to understand what it means

for us to live once again this day with Him.

And then when we make some progress in getting our own head screwed on straight,

we turn our attention to figuring out

how to fight for the ones we love,

how to reinforce the truth in them,

how to help sooth their wounds

and give them the encouragement they need in order to make it through.

And I will warn you right up front

that, if you are serious about discovering and following the voice of the Spirit within you,

it will lead you into a greater and greater sense of helplessness and dependance upon your God

because we very quickly discover

that the things we most want done in our own life

and in the lives of those we love

are things we are utterly incapable of doing.

Our God steps into our lives

and tells us that His one great commandment for us

is that we love the people He has placed into our lives.

But what He doesn’t tell us

is that, when we do,

we very quickly realize how incapable we are

of fixing anything that’s broken in the lives of those we love.

And the very act of loving

drives us back to our God

in desperate dependance upon Him

to do both in us and in the ones we love

those things that need to be done.

In recent years I’ve been strongly drawn to the prayers

that we have preserved for us in the Bible

because they help me know how I can pray for the people I care about.

Just recently I came across another one,

this one is found in 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12.

Paul says, To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I love that!

I love knowing that I can look at the life of a fellow Christian I care deeply about,

and see them longing for a life that works,

that makes sense,

that has purpose and direction and meaning,

and then I can pray for them that their God will fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power in their life.

I can’t fix anything for them,

but their God can and will.

And I can fight for them, with them through my prayers.

I don’t understand that,

I just know it’s true,

it’s the way things are,

and it helps me make sense of this call to love given to us by our God.

2. The second crucial attitude is found in verses 12-14 where Paul says,

Phil. 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Phil. 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

If I were to restate the attitude I see Paul offering us in those verses

I would say that trust in Christ is not a point, it’s a daily process.

Right now every one of us here

has something we’re brooding over,

something we can’t fix,

something we don’t know how to handle,

or cure,

or escape,

or correct.

This day we are faced with a choice -

do we share it with Him,

trust what He says about it,

follow His counsel and His leadership,

or do we hide it from Him,

and do it our way?

And at the core of that daily process

is our determination to resist Satan’s great lie

that our past is what will determine our future.

In Christ it is not that way.

It is not our past that determines our future,

it is our God and His ability to bring beauty out of ashes

and joy out of our mourning, and our pain, and our agony.

That’s where we were last week.

3. And then I see Paul offering us

on more crucial attitude

in verse 16.

And it does fascinate me to see

the statement Paul makes as he ends this remarkable passage.

He says,

Phil. 3:16 ...however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

This statement in verse 16

is addressed to the child of God

at a critical phase in our growth process.

With each of us

when we come to Christ

we bring with us certain areas

where we have forfeited our ability

to choose righteousness.

It is these areas Christ was addressing

when he told us that,

‟John 8:34 ... everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.”

We may call it slavery,

or addiction,

or possession,

or bondage,

and there may be all sorts of intricate

causes and influences

that brought us to that point.

But the result is always the same - we’re trapped in a pattern of sin

we cannot escape.

Outside of Christ

we handle those areas

by boldly proclaiming our “right”

to live any way we choose.

But once we come to Christ

His Spirit places within us

what He describes as “a hunger and thirst for righteousness”.

He gives us the courage to face honestly

the evil within us,

and the longing to be free from its power.

With many of us

our first response to that hunger and thirst for righteousness

is to attempt to conquer the evil within us

through the power of the flesh.

We commit, and recommit, and recommit again,

and we try to keep ourselves psyched-up

and emotionally charged,

clinging to our own determination

and strength of will

in an attempt to conquer the evil.

The result of all such efforts

is an endless roller coaster ride

of brief victories

followed by dismal defeats.

The problem, of course,

is that, as Paul puts it in Galatians 3:3,

having begun in the Spirit

we are now attempting to become perfected by the flesh,

and the more we write our rules

and attempt to keep them,

the more frustrated and defeated we become.

This statement of Paul’s in Phil. 3:16

was not directed at this point in our healing process.

When Paul said, ...let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained,

he was not offering a battle cry to the flesh

to try a little harder,

and hang in there a little longer.

With all such flesh-based attempts at changing human behavior

true, enduring healing cannot begin

until our flesh finally faces crushing defeat and we turn to our Lord for healing.

If you are still in the frantic fever of flesh-based attempts at self-improvement

what I’m going to say now

will make no sense to you.

And as long as I’ve gotten us into this,

let me just say that

the problem with the flesh-based attempts at change

is not that the goals are wrong,

but rather that the flesh always,

only aims at the external symptoms of our sin.

It attempts to change our actions.

But attempting to change the actions

without first bringing healing

to the underlying thought patterns

that are producing the actions is futile.

Christians do not sin

because they think it’s fun.

Quite frankly, it’s not - sin always ultimately generates far more pain in our lives

than it ever produces fun.

Christians sin because somewhere in their thinking

there are lies in place

that have convinced them

that their needs

cannot be met any other way

except through that sin.

That’s why,

unless the underlying lies are dealt with first,

any attempt to change the external behavior

will always end in defeat.

But when God begins His healing process within us

He begins by teaching us how to think differently,

how to think consistent with the truth.

That, of course, is what Paul is saying

in Romans 12:2 when he says,

Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, ...

Now, I’ve said all of that

to say that, in that healing process,

as our Lord carefully brings into our life

and into our thinking

all of the ingredients necessary

for the truth to begin to take root and grow in our lives,

there will come a point

where we realize that for the first time

we can actually choose.

He will bring us from addiction,

or possession,

or slavery

to the point where we can choose.

It was this freeing, healing process

that Peter was talking about in I Peter 4:1-2 when he said,

Therefore, since Christ has suffered (death) in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered (death) in the flesh has ceased from sin,

so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.

And this is what Paul was talking about

a few verses earlier in the same passage

in Philippians when he talked about being “conformed to His death”.

It is the death of those flesh lies within us

that held us in bondage to sin.

Peter has got such a powerful and wonderful description of this process in our lives,

this process through which

our King keeps feeding us the truth

and does it in ways that finally get around all of our fears,

and our distorted beliefs and assumptions,

until we can finally see both the lies we have believed

and the truth and freedom our God is offering us.

It’s found In 2 Peter 1:19 where he says,

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

And my friends, that is exactly what it feels like

when we finally see it.

It comes to us like a glorious sunrise

following a very dark night,

and the morning star arises in our heart.

I remember talking with a Christian

who I knew had been in that darkness

and had finally seen the light of his King,

a light that required him to make some major changes in his life.

And I asked him if he felt like His submission to his God

was requiring him to give up something he felt he still needed.

He responded by saying, “No! I feel like God has given me a great deliverance in my life!”

That’s how the truth affects us

when the Spirit of God finally is able to open the eyes of our hearts

so that we can see it for what it is.

OK, at this phase of the healing process,

for the first time we will discover within ourselves

the ability to make choices consistent with righteousness

and with the will of God,

not because we’re all psyched-up from the most recent powerful Christian speaker

or moving worship service,

but simply because we have finally heard the truth,

and the truth has finally broken the power of the lie within us and set us free.

It is at this point

that Paul’s comment in Phil. 3:16 is aimed.

Phil. 3:16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

He is saying, “My child, treasure your progress as a precious gift from God.”

He wants us to know

that, though God can and does

bring very real healing into our lives,

and He makes the choice of righteousness

a viable option for the child of God,

yet our flesh

will always have a fondness

for the old ways.

And when he says, “let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained”,

I see him offering us an essential survival tool for forward movement

in our walk with the King.

Once our Lord has made freedom

an option in our lives,

cling to it,

cherish it,

hold to it as the great and glorious gift it is.

It’s true - we are not yet

anywhere near where we want to be.

That is the reality of life with the King

as long as we’re on this planet.

But it is also true that

we are nowhere near where we once were.

And we should never throw away what we have gained

simply because we are not yet

where we want to be.

Maybe this will help -

I want to offer you a statement that you can make to yourself,

a statement that affirms your decision

to receive and rest in the healing your God has done within you up to this point.

When you find within yourself

the call of your flesh to return to some old sin pattern,

rather than telling yourself, “No, I can’t go back there!”,

say to yourself and to your Lord, “I choose to receive the gift of righteousness again this day.”

That’s what it is, you know - the gift of righteousness,

the gift given to you by your King,

given in love,

given to make you more free to be the person He designed you to be.

And once He has accomplished the healing work within us,

all we have to do

is to choose to accept the gift He offers.

And when we see it correctly

we will see if for what it is - an amazing, wonderful, miraculous gift indeed.

Our God has been incredibly good to us,

and faithful to us.

He has brought us this far,

and He will bring us all the way home.

Phil. 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.