Committed to the Goal
Philippians 3:13,14 Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Before this month is out the Olympics will have started. All around the world, for years, athletes have been preparing for this one two-week period that starts at the end of July. At this moment, everything in them is focusing on that time when they will compete against the rest of the world. In every category there will only be one winner, and they want to be it. They are utterly focused on that one thing, that one goal - a gold medal.
A little while ago in a TV programme about preparations for the Olympics, they highlighted a young gymnast who had been training all her life and was reaching top pitch as she readied her mind and her body for this great contest. And then she had an accident and her injury meant that she had to retire from competitive gymnastics - after all those years of training! How devastating that must be.
The language in our two verses above is language of utter commitment, the commitment of an athlete who is all out to win, but these are not the words of an athlete, they are the words of a man called Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus. Saul had been what we might call an intellectual, but a religious intellectual. He was clearly very bright and had everything going for him but earlier in this same letter to the church at Philippi, he declared that he counted all that he had as rubbish in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ.
He had been an all-out religious zealot in Judaism, but one day on a journey to Damascus, he had a vision and encountered Jesus Christ who spoke to him from heaven. His life was utterly transformed. From then on he gave his life to telling others about Jesus. In one sense his story is not unusual - for there have many many very bright people (and not so bright) who have encountered Jesus and their lives have been transformed. What makes Paul stand out is his utter commitment to this goal of telling others about Jesus,
But that goal had another goal attached to it, if you like. It was the goal of eventually going to heaven and Paul wanted to ensure that nothing, but nothing, would stop that happening. Like our modern day athletes, that vision almost consumed him, but it was a vision that helped him cope with the terrible opposition that he so often received. To see the style of life that he experienced, look up his second letter to the church at Corinth in the New Testament, chapter 11 and verses 24 to 27. These things he shrugged off rather like an athlete shrugs off the pain and failures during practice.
I remember hearing the story of a wise old uncle talking to his young nephew who was just taking his A-levels at school. “What do you hope to do?” he asked him.
“Go to University,” was the reply. “And then?”
“Get a job,” came then next reply. “And then?”
“Get married and have a family and go up in my job.” “And then?”
“Get to the top.” “And then?”
“I’ll probably retire.” “And then?”
“I’ll no doubt eventually die.” “And then?”
There was silence.
We can have tremendous goals while we live out our lives. Sometimes we achieve them, sometimes we have to temper or change them, and sometimes we just have to abandon them, but the big danger is that we allow those goals to make us miss THE greatest goal of life, finding out what it is really all about and what comes next. How terrible.
And after the gold medal? I’ll probably become a voice for athletics. And then? I’ll retire and encourage others. And then. Well, I’ll die, I suppose. And then?