Press Toward the Mark

We arrive at the final day of this journey, and Paul meets us here not at the finish line but in the middle of the race, which is exactly where most of us live. "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect," he writes in Philippians 3:12, "but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." This is the apostle Paul speaking, the man who wrote half the New Testament, who planted churches across the known world, who had been caught up into the third heaven. And he says: I have not arrived. I am still reaching.

There is enormous relief in that, and enormous challenge. The relief is this: you do not need to have it all figured out before you begin walking in purpose. Paul himself was still pressing forward. The challenge is this: the pressing must not stop. He narrows it to one defining motion, "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14). Forgetting. Reaching. Pressing. These are active, deliberate, ongoing verbs.

The writer of Hebrews adds the image that makes it vivid: a great cloud of witnesses, the faithful men and women of every age, surrounding us like a stadium full of those who have already run their race. "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1). Notice, it is the race "set before us." Not someone else's race. Not the race you wished you had. The one set before you, with your particular path, your particular gifts, your particular calling.

This week you have seen that you were made on purpose, for a purpose, that God fashioned you before you drew breath, that He calls you by name, that He has placed gifts in your hands and work before your feet. The question that remains is the one only you can answer: will you press? Will you lay down the weight of yesterday's failures and yesterday's glories alike, fix your eyes on Jesus, and run the race He has marked out for you? The mark is ahead. The calling is high. And the One who set you in motion is faithful to see you through.