Press on Toward the Goal

     Today in our women's Bible study a young woman spoke about how difficult it was for her to forgive herself for her past sins. She knew that after she took them to Jesus, asked for forgiveness and repented of those actions that Jesus immediately forgave her. But her trouble was she couldn't forgive herself so her flesh and Satan had a field day condemning her and keeping her from having victory in life through Christ.
     God has made life simple, but we have complicated it through rules, peer pressure, social stigmas, etc. God says in the Bible that all we are called to do to enter into heaven and live in eternity with Him is this:
^{Luke 10:25} On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
   ²⁶ “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
 ²⁷ He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
   ²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

     I'm going to work on making my goal in life simple: Love God with my whole heart, soul, strength and mind and love my neighbor like I would like to be loved.

Hibiscus growing in our yard is simply beautiful, yet amazingly complicated. Only God can do both.

Philippians 3: ⁷ But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
     ¹² 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. ¹³ 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, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

     ¹⁵ All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. ¹⁶ Only let us live up to what we have already attained. (Emphasis mine-KT)