Philippians 3:12-14 - Not Already There
Tom Shrader explores Paul's honest admission in Philippians 3:12-14 that he hasn't 'already obtained it' - complete Christlikeness. Paul demonstrates the importance of spiritual focus with his 'one thing I do' approach: forgetting what lies behind (both successes and failures) and pressing forward toward the goal. Shrader encourages believers to pursue spiritual growth with passion and intentionality rather than resting on past achievements or being paralyzed by past failures.
“Great things are not accomplished by balanced people.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Philippians
Recorded: November 10, 2016
Duration: 39 min
Themes: focus, perseverance, growth, purpose, forgetting, pressing forward, striving, humility, struggling with past, pursuing spiritual growth, feeling spiritually stuck, new believer, mature christian, discouraged christian, perfectionist, comparing to others
Scripture: Philippians 3:1-11, Philippians 3:12-14, Acts 9, Romans 8:29, Colossians 1:29, Philippians 2:13
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, christian perfection, progressive sanctification, christlikeness, spiritual growth, calling, perseverance of saints
Full Transcript
The Central Question of Christian Growth
Will you open your Bibles if you would please to the book of Philippians? We're working our way through this book. I said last time that I thought today we would look at chapter 3 verses 12, 13, and 14. I asked you last week—and I have no power or influence over you—to read these three verses and maybe just see what jumps out at you in a casual reading.
So let's do that. Then we'll go back and paint the context and kind of navigate our way through there today.
So Paul writes this: Philippians 3:12, "Not that I've already obtained it." So immediately, what's your first question in that? What's the "it"? "Or I've already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold." So he's trying to strive for something. What's he want to lay hold of? "That for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus." So in other words, God got me for a reason. I want to pursue whatever that is. That's my goal.
"Brethren, I don't regard myself as having laid hold of it yet." So again, just casual observation. That's the third time He's communicated that idea already. I haven't laid hold of it yet. "But one thing I do"—so that always gets a circle in casual reading. He's saying one thing. This is significant.
The Power of Singular Focus
So we can go down two areas here. The first thing I want to do is to figure out what the one thing I do is. But I always like to step back in a teaching environment and say look at the principle here of a focus. Look at the importance of a focus. There's only one thing I do.
"I forget what lies behind"—so at some point I want to figure out what is it that lies behind. "And I'm reaching forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." There is in there hope, and I probably can connect verse 14 with the last part of verse 12.
So that's just a casual—that's not without any study. You should be able to sit down and parse that out and meditate on it. Think about it for a while, make some notes, and pull a lot out of that section.
The Context: Paul's Great Reversal
But we want to put it in context. Paul, last week we looked at chapter 3 verses 1 through 11, and Paul was talking about a reversal that had taken place in his life. It's the reversal that is talked about, written about by Luke in the book of Acts in the ninth chapter. Why don't you just turn there? We won't necessarily read it, but we can glean a lot of information from just even a casual scanning of it.
Paul, as Saul of Tarsus, presided over the stoning of Stephen. He is in the process of literally going house-to-house and trying to wipe out the church. Chapter 9 verse 1: he's still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. That's what he's doing. He goes at that point to get letters from the high priest to go to Damascus so that he can find any who were there who are part of this movement—we would say Christian, but it's the church, the part of the way, men and women—and he's going to bring them back to Jerusalem.
Then there's a sudden flash. Paul at this moment falls on the ground in verse 9, and he hears a voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" And Saul says, "Who are You?" And it said, "I'm Jesus who you're persecuting. Now I want you to go into the city, and when you get to the city, go to a specific place and be there, and I'll communicate to you."
God's Specific Plan for Paul
So he does. Verse 9 says for three days, and then a certain man named Ananias—all of a sudden God speaks to him and says, "Ananias." "Behold, here I am, Lord." And the Lord said to him, "Arise and go to a street called Straight and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he is praying, and he's seen a vision that a man named Ananias will come and lay hands on him so that he might regain his sight."
Then Ananias responds in the midst of this—and again, if you project yourself into the setting, it almost seems a bit odd. Is it now God speaking to me? It seems to me that would be somewhat of a show-stopper, stunner for me. I'd like to think—don't know this—that if God spoke to me, my immediate reaction would be, "What? I'm going to go do this." But I love it.
Ananias says in verse 13, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man and how much he did to the saints in Jerusalem." He's saying, "Are you sure you got the right guy?" Because I've heard what this guy's like. And God basically says, "You know, I didn't make a mistake here. I didn't stutter."
So off he goes and he prays, and Paul—Saul—regains his sight. And it's at that moment there's an amazing reversal that's taken place.
From Religion to True Biblical Faith
Now go back to the passage we're looking at, Philippians chapter 3, verse 1 through 11. And he tells you that reversal. It was a reversal from religion to true biblical faith. He says at the end of verse 3—remember, here's the key phrase—"I put no confidence in the flesh."
I have all this pedigree beginning in verse 5. I have the right family. The first three things He said we didn't contribute to: "circumcised on the eighth day, born of the nation of Israel, and of the tribe of Benjamin." He had nothing to do with any of those, but he said that's my pedigree. That's my family. That's my heritage.
And then when it came to faith, we take those characteristics—we see the next four—and we say, and this is not in a pejorative way, it's in a descriptive way: he was a super Jew. He did everything there was to do and way more. And Paul said, "Listen, I spent my life driving toward this and I exceeded essentially everybody's expectation, including mine maybe."
Verse 7: "But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. And more than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus"—and then the singular personal pronoun—"my Lord." There's a reversal that takes place.
Whenever I think of this—for me, and I brought this Bible today—this is my very first study Bible I ever had. Bought it in 1980, not long after God saved me. It's interesting to go through...
has been taped and retaped and marked up and probably used more than any Bible I've had. There are these notes in the front of stuff that Larry would say.
One day Larry was talking about Saul becoming Paul and he read a quote from Major Ian Thomas. You know that name—some of you maybe know that name. At one point Ian Thomas sat down and he wrote, placing himself in Paul's position, his appraisal of Paul as he viewed Jesus. So let me read it to you, writing from Paul's perspective as he looks at Jesus.
Paul's Pre-Conversion Evaluation of Jesus
He said, "There was a time when I, Saul of Tarsus, made my own independent evaluation of this man called Jesus of Nazareth. I investigated into His life to see if the leader of this Nazarene cult was worth following. I made my own independent evaluation of what He was worth. I was not unfair. I was not unkind. I applied to Him all the normal, natural standards by which any life is evaluated in any age.
I looked into His ancestry and discovered there was a cloud over His birth right from the start. As I investigated, it became quite clear that He was the illegitimate son of a faithless woman who had been taken in by a kind-hearted carpenter, raised as his own son. But yet He was an outcast from the beginning and socially was worth absolutely nothing.
I investigated His professional standing and I discovered that He was born of peasant stock, attended no schools, He was raised as a simple carpenter in a village of no standing in Israel. Professionally, He was worth absolutely nothing. As Saul of Tarsus, I investigated His theological and ecclesiastical background. I found that He sat at nobody's feet, that He'd been to no seminary, that had no theological training. In fact, He was reputed by all the ecclesiastical authorities of His day. He was nothing but an incorrigible street preacher and rabble rouser. As far as His theological standing was concerned, He was worth absolutely nothing.
Furthermore, I looked into His standing financially. I found He had no bank account, that He was born in a cave and laid in a borrowed manger, that He lived in other people's homes, that He was a scrounger, always borrowing things. He borrowed money to pay taxes, borrowed His clothes from other people, rode around on a borrowed donkey, died on a borrowed cross, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Financially, from the standpoint of the world's accumulation of goods, He was worth absolutely nothing.
So, as I investigated and applied to Him the normal standard by which any life is evaluated, I discovered that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, was worth absolutely nothing."
The Damascus Road Reversal
"But, on the Damascus Road, something happened. There, in a blinding flash of a moment, I looked into the face of a man and saw God. I discovered that He, who I thought to be worth nothing, was Lord of everything, and that He was the God of glory, and that everything is made and upheld by the word of His power, and that He is behind all things, and He is the very imprint and image of God.
There, I found that He, who I thought to be nothing, was everything, and I, who I thought to be everything, was nothing. In that moment, I came to a tremendous reversal of all the values of my life. Later, I learned that I, who was nothing, could be filled with Him who was everything, and that would make my life something."
Well, that's the reversal that we're talking about, and that's not just Paul. I try to make the point, whenever I get the opportunity, that Paul's conversion is the same as every conversion that's ever taken place. If your conversion is not the same as Paul's, then you haven't been converted at all. Now, the circumstances are different, but the substance is the same. I turned from me, who's nothing, to Him who's everything, and then the bonus in this, as Thomas adds at the end, is all of a sudden I discover that though I'm nothing and He's everything, as I follow Him, I live a life that suddenly is worth living.
Paul's Honest Struggle
So that's what Paul has been writing about, and he's talking about this reversal. So let's go back, break this apart, and Paul writes some words that I find very encouraging, and he says I'm not already there yet.
I was talking to some of our staff guys the other day and I was saying, Paul really hacks me off here in the book of Philippians and really throughout his writing, because he doesn't give me any of his struggle, really. He alludes to it, he says I'm the chief among sinners, but I'm with people all the time. So I sin every day, and I will frequently go, give me a taste of that. Well, what was yesterday's sin? Oh, I don't write enough thank-you notes, or I mean, rather than give or get in and go, no, I'm just a greedy, slothful person. They never say that.
I love and take comfort, and this may be sick, in Paul's struggle, because he talks about this in very grandiose terms. My suspicion would be, if some of you read this and go, wow, that's amazing, put Paul in a category separate from everyone else and say, this is a super saint, and then the rest of us, we just kind of are sleeping along. He's the A-team, he's Michael Jordan and Jack Nicklaus, and I need a football guy, Walter Payton, and Babe Ruth, all rolled into one. He's like beyond everyone else, and Paul's saying, yeah, there is that sense, I guess, in which that's true, but I'm struggling here in a real way.
I'm not there. I want to be there, and what Paul's telling us, and what we know, is we don't get to there, to that completion, to obtaining it until we die. Then everything between now and then is a matter of spiritual growth.
Compelling Reasons for Spiritual Growth
I came across this list the other day. There are nine things. This author suggests the compelling reasons for growing spiritually. Number one, it glorifies God. In this process, we say along the way, God gets the glory, like Paul wrote in Philippians chapter 2, verse 13, for it says, God who's at work in me, both to will and to work, it's God who's doing this. Secondly, it provides evidence of your spiritual...
The Evidence of Genuine Salvation
There was a book that John MacArthur wrote years ago called The Gospel According to Jesus. In this book, among other things, MacArthur's point was that if there is no life change in you, then you have no biblical assurance of your salvation. What we're saying is, there has to be something that changes in your life. You are not the same guy or gal that you were before.
Here's the third thing spiritual growth does: it adores and makes visible the truth of God. We say it this way—we make the invisible God visible. I did a funeral last Saturday for Gary Waters. Some of you remember Gary. Gary would sit right here, and it was a great time. It was one of those funerals where his wife came and said, "Why don't you design this for me and let me do this?" I said, "Well I'd like to put a share time in there, a conversation time."
Gary moved down from Waterloo, Iowa when he was like 10 or something. So there were four or five people from Papago Elementary that went to school with him. He was from the class of 1959 at Phoenix Union, and there were a bunch of these people. And so there's this collision—it's George Costanza and the worlds are colliding around you. Anybody who's a Christian, your life really is divided into two segments: pre-Christ, post-Christ. And so there's this collision, and I found it to be just a wonderful, validating testimony to Gary's faith. There's a genuine life change.
When we sat in 1991—and I was part of a group that drafted mission statements for Priority Living and then for the church as well, East Valley Bible Church—in both of them, my key thought was biblical life change. So Priority Living, and obviously the constituency has aged and changed, but at its time was to reach businessmen and women by teaching the timeless Word of God in a contemporary context and seeing biblical life change. I could see the reality of your salvation.
More Fruits of Spiritual Growth
Number four: it gives assurance to your salvation. You change and you go, "This happened, it's fruit." The fruit of the Spirit—I begin to see this in my life. And we've said this all along about fruit, kind of paraphrasing the popular bumper sticker: fruit happens. You don't plan it; you just begin to change. Life begins to take place.
Number five: it preserves believers from sorrow associated with spiritual inventory. In other words, presumably you're getting wise and the spiritual growth will help you avoid making particularly stupid mistakes. We had a conversation yesterday about something. I was talking to a guy and he said, "What do you think I ought to do?" And he laid this situation out and I said, "Well, what do you think? I need to step back because this seems so obvious. What do you think you ought to do?" And he laid it out—I mean it was like it was totally a no-brainer. And he said, "There was a day and an age when I know this is what I ought to do, but I wouldn't do it. I think I have the strength to do this now." And that's exactly what he's saying. It avoids collision courses.
Number six: it protects the cause of Christ from reproach. I have two things that you already know that have struck me in the last month. Sunday, I was teaching at a church down on Central Avenue—I've mentioned it to you before, New City Church, good church. And I had this uncharacteristically optimistic moment where I'm standing in the back and one service is getting out, another service is coming in. And it represents the area.
Encouragement from the Next Generation
So there's some guys in there, and I don't have a problem with a lot of the tattoos and the sleeves. There was a guy that had a piercing that looked particularly uncomfortable to me—it was right in here. And there was a guy with gauges in his ears. The gauges—that's the one thing I seem to not be able to do. I get a little nervous, but they were probably almost silver dollar size. But I'm looking around and this room is filled with young men and women, I'll say 22 to 32, and I had this momentary burst of optimism that all is not lost in the city. All is not lost in the world.
And I will tell you that those of you that are a bit cynical of the next generation—the next generation of followers of Christ, and especially churches—you have no reason to be. They're so far beyond where we were spiritually, and their commitment and their understanding is very encouraging. So that's one.
The other thing I've had is that we say that Jesus has changed our life. That when we act in a blatantly sinful way, we bring question into Him and who He really is. Jesus Christ has changed my life, but then I live just like everyone else. Spiritual growth says Jesus Christ has changed my life, and you say—not in an arrogant way, but in an agreement way—"This is what He's done."
The Final Benefits of Growth
Give you the seventh one: it produces joy. The most miserable people I know are those who are Christians, who aren't growing spiritually and are involved in sin. It just robs your joy. Spiritual growth, regardless of circumstances, produces a joy.
Here's the eighth thing: it equips you for ministry. Ministry means literally service. It prepares you to serve wherever God's placed you. And then I'll give you the last one: it enhances your witness to the lost world. As people watch you, they go, "There's something different, unique, and special about that."
So there's spiritual growth. I don't know if you've ever even thought about that. That's some of the things that ought to take place in your life as you begin to grow.
Paul's Honest Self-Assessment
Well, Paul says in verse 12, "I haven't already obtained it. I haven't become perfect." What's the "it"? The "it" in this is Christlikeness, true, complete godliness, in a final form, no room for improvement. Well, that isn't going to happen here. There's a process.
Here's a word I'm getting sick of: the trajectory of this is upward. Paul writes in Romans...
The Process of Sanctification
For whom He foreknew He predestined, what? To become conformed to the image of God, that He might be the firstborn among many, and whom He predestined He called—that's called into faith—who He called He justified, all along the way, nobody's falling out. That is, to me, right with God, and those that He justified, ultimately, He glorified. So those of you that are into the theological stuff, it's the sanctification, which is an act of God. And Paul's saying, I'm in this process. I'm not there yet. I haven't obtained it. But I press on.
When I get the word literally, the idea of "press on" is to run or to follow after. It's aggressive, energetic. I'm following after this. This idea of "let go and let God"—I guess I don't know what it means. It sounds a bit too cavalier for me. If it means I'm going to trust God to do what God's going to do, I'm fine with that, as long as I'm doing what is reasonably expected of me, and pursuing this.
To fight the good fight, Colossians 1:29. I'm laboring, I'm striving. I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. "Laid hold of" means to seize or to grasp that I'm in that process of becoming like Him.
The Impediment: Not Having Arrived
Well, what would be an impediment to that? Verse 13: "Brethren, I don't regard myself as having laid hold of it yet." So that's the third time he's made this comment. But one thing I do—this is not original to me—it's that principle of focus.
I'm going to do a coaches conference with PAO and FCA in May, the end of May, first of June, and I think it's out at San Marcos, if I remember. And the last time it was at San Marcos, it was an NFL conference. Right about where Mark is sitting, so about the third row, was Mike Singletary. So if I say, those of you that know football, if I say Mike Singletary, what picture comes to your mind? His eyes. And that's the way it was. I was so intimidated. I'm walking around, and it was just like those eyes just went like that. I would say something that was incredibly funny, and he would literally go, "Huh." They had told me that he was going to leave early. I think this was like a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday—he was going to leave Saturday night. His wife came up Sunday morning and said, "Mike really enjoyed and got a lot out of what you were saying." I said, "Man, I'm going to take your word for this, because I have no empirical data for that." But you think of that focus.
The Problem with Balance
So I have this love-hate relationship with this word. It's a word that's bothered me for a long time yet I understand its place. But this idea of being balanced—I guess, but great things are not accomplished by balanced people. I can't fathom that if I said, we're going to do word association, and I say the Apostle Paul, I can't fathom the word balance comes to mind. It would be this phrase: "Now, this one thing I do." When I preach, I preach Christ and Christ crucified.
Now, what he's saying—maybe this is the balanced thought—Paul's saying is, regardless of the topic, whatever I preach, it's based on the gospel and Christ crucified. So if I'm going to talk about marriage, the best marriage conference I've ever been to was by a guy named Paul David Tripp. You should be reading some of his stuff. "How People Change"—that'd be a great book to be reading. But Paul David Tripp, it was a marriage conference. We were there three days, and I don't know that he spent ten minutes on marriage. It was all about grace.
Because here's the deal: if I love God more, I'm going to love Sandy more. I would rather have Sandy go to a retreat or intensive about her relationship with Christ than go away for three days to figure out some technique that she'll forget about how to be a better wife. If I love God more, I'm going to love Sandy more. If she loves God more, she's going to love me more. If you put two people like that together, you're going to have a pretty strong marriage. So Paul's saying there's this one thing I do.
Forgetting What Lies Behind
And then he offers—he says it negatively and positively. I forget what lies behind, I reach forward. So I was thinking about this in big bucket terms. What is he forgetting? So I don't think he's saying I forget my biblical knowledge, I forget doctrine. There's two things in my past that are in big buckets to me: my successes and my failures. So I said, I'm forgetting both of those.
We know it, right? We're obliged to say it in our advertising: past success doesn't guarantee future success. So I may look back and say, I don't need to because I have always achieved at this level. I look back and I rest on that. It's kind of what Paul's looking at here a little bit earlier in this chapter that we looked at last week in the introduction this week, is he said, "I've got all of that stuff," and it would be easy for Paul to say, "I'm not open to these new ideas. I've already figured that out." And he said, "No, I got that that was there." And that is now—this is Paul's words, not mine—rubbish, King James dung.
So don't fall into the trap. It's always interesting to me, and I'm sure it's coincidence, but it seems like every major league pitcher in his contract year has a career year. It just seems like that's always—okay, I don't know if I imagine that, but doesn't it seem like that? He's in a career year and he hits .312. He's a lifetime .240 hitter. He hits .280 with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases. So you sign him and what do you get? You get a lifetime .240 hitter. That's what you get. I don't know what happened in there, but it's like, it's there, but that's how we make decisions, right? So I can't come to spring training and go, "Man, every year, this is what's happened." I have to approach it new. It's the same thing with you.
Forgetting Our Failures
The other thing is our failures. I can become so immersed in my failure and my pain that I'm now identified by my pain. And once that identification takes place, it becomes the topic of conversation. I met a women's ministry event about two or three years ago, and I'm standing
next to one of the ladies that leads it. I said, "Well, that chick over there in the red dress, what's her deal?" She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, tell me her story." She goes, "Well, she had a bitter divorce." I said, "You don't even need to go any further. I can look at her and see bitter."
I'm sure that this gal, like many people, is going through life going, "I don't understand. There's nothing in you that's compelling. Nobody wants to be my friend." That's because you have a big sign on your head that says, "Stay away from me." So I'm immersed in this. Paul's saying, "Listen, whether my past is filled with these great things or filled with these terrible things, I'm done with that. I'm not about the past, I'm about the future. I'm about reaching forward."
Hope and Change for a Hopeless Generation
We had an election in 2008 where the presidential candidate who was successful campaigned on two things. What were they? Hope and change. Well, if we needed them in 2008, we really need them now. But that's what we want. We want some hope.
I was just talking to somebody briefly this morning about this very idea. There's this whole generation that's coming up that really has no hope. When we were younger, the idea was you work hard, you strive, there's something out there that's better, it's going to be better. There are going to be struggles. We got it. But it's going to be better.
You have a whole generation now, and I'm afraid I could be the president of it, that goes, "I don't know if it is going to be better. I don't even know if there is a tomorrow." I don't know if there is a tomorrow. But Paul said, "Look, I don't care about the politics and the economics and all of this. I'm pressing on, I'm reaching forward for what lies ahead." What is that? "I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
Three Essential Questions
So I ask you three questions. Have you left the past behind? Is there something, and if there's this issue of forgiveness, we see this all the time, and I get immersed in these studies, and lots of people argue about it. Can I forgive somebody if they don't ask for forgiveness? I'm going, "They're dead. They're not going to come in here today and ask you to forgive them." They're dead. And you're still arguing with your dad or your mom or your uncle or whoever it was. Listen, you holding onto that isn't hurting them, it's only hurting you. You know that. So come to grips with the past.
Number two, are you making any progress in the future, a deliberate progress? And this is so not me, which really means to be able to answer that, you need some markers. I've never been a goal person. The only goal I ever had in business was to never have a goal. I'm just not driven by it, but I see that it's there.
I'm in a conversation the other day, and we're talking about the church, and are we getting stuff done? The elementary question to me is, "I don't know, what is it we want to do? And are we moving toward it?" Well, if that's true corporately, it's true in your spiritual life.
The Difference Between Purpose and Goals
Here's the last thing: do you passionately pursue some dreams? Some dreams along the lines and the goals. You know the difference, right, between a mission or a purpose and a goal? If I have a purpose or a mission, it's something that extends beyond my life, it's something that I can never attain, but it provides the definition for the goals along the way.
So my mission can be to know God and love Him, right? Never going to get that done till I get to heaven perfectly. But as I'm moving along there, I have goals. Read through the Bible in a year—it's a goal. It's measurable, short term, attainable. Sometimes if you take the exercise, you'll discover that you're achieving all your goals, but you're still frustrated because those goals aren't in line with your purpose.
A Lesson in Passion from Howard Schultz
The other day I was reading through this one thing that I do and I thought about this book. Had it not been for Sandy, I would have never found the book because she went in and said to me one day, "I think we need to get all of these books that are in boxes and on the floor. This is a mess, your stuff's a mess. We need to get it in bookcases." I said, "You know, that's a good idea." The next thing I hear is, "These bookcases are up." I said, "Well, that's good. Don't hurt yourself. And don't be too loud because I take a nap at two."
So I go in the other day and I said, "I wonder if I can find this book." And there it is. This is Howard Schultz, who's the CEO and now intergalactic CEO of Starbucks. This was the first of two books that He wrote. One was about the coming of Starbucks and the second is about when He reengaged. Starbucks existed—He didn't invent Starbucks, He discovered Starbucks. It existed before He was there, it's a little local coffee shop.
But I just want to read this and I want you to think about passion and focus. On page 36, He's writing as He's heading back to New York from His first encounter with Starbucks:
"On the five-hour plane trip back to New York the next day, I couldn't stop thinking about Starbucks. It was like a shining jewel. I took one sip of watery airline coffee and pushed it away. Getting into my briefcase, I pulled out a bag of Sumatra beans, opened it up and sniffed it, leaned back and my mind started wandering. I believe in destiny. And at that moment, flying 35,000 feet above the earth, I could feel the tug of Starbucks. There was something magic about it, a passion, an authenticity that I'd never experienced in business. Maybe, just maybe, I could be part of that magic. Maybe I could—"
help it grow. How would it feel to build a business? How would it feel to own equity, not just collect a paycheck? What could I bring to Starbucks that could make it even better than it was? The opportunity seemed as wide open as the land I was flying over. By the time I landed at Kennedy Airport, I knew in my heart, this is it. I jumped into a taxi, went home to Sherry, that was the way I met Starbucks and neither of us has been the same ever since."
If you take that passion and you marry it with some sense of capacity and ability, it's understandable how Starbucks becomes synonymous. That's when you know your product. That's when you know your product's good. When facial tissue becomes Kleenex, or coffee becomes Starbucks, your name becomes synonymous with it. Now you know you've arrived.
Finding Our Greater Passion
I read that and there's a side of me that goes, "Hey Howard, it's coffee." There's another side of me that's energized by that and to say, that sounds very much like what Paul's saying. Here's the trick for you and me: we've got the big passion, it's the passion of Christ. It's how do I bring that love for Him into whatever maybe that human passion is. Maybe it's coaching baseball.
I'm with a guy the other day, this is an interesting moment and then we've got to quit. He's 63 and we're talking about guys our age and we're talking about this phenomenon that we see and basically it's this: they have a lot of tread left on the tire but there's not too much inspiration. The last time I was at Phoenix Country Club, I went into the men's grill about three in the afternoon. There had to be 20 guys in there having a gin and tonic, debriefing their fifth golf game of the week, complaining about everything.
He said, "You know, I just played at Arizona and I finished it, it was about 2:30 and I went into the grill and there's a dozen guys there. It's the same thing." I said, "Here's the problem, you've lost the focus." And energizing these guys is tough because you try to get them together and say, "Let's meet Tuesday." "I get my nails done on Tuesday." "Thursday's bridge." "Wednesday's open but that's my margin day."
God-Given Passion
What's that thing that ignited, that passion that God will give you, that you pray about? "God, give me a passion." Isn't there, and maybe it's me, isn't there something compelling about reading that? And then what's good about this is you know the rest of the story. You know how this ends up. We got something a little bit better than coffee: Jesus.
And it's like Paul, he said, "Here's what my life is all about. It's pressing on toward Him." That doesn't express itself by meaning I have to go to Scottsdale Bible Church and get a job. Whether I'm an administrator at a church or an administrator at Intel, both are full-time ministries with opportunity to express all those things we talked about at the beginning when we talked about spiritual growth.
Your Divine Design
That's the charge God's given you: to find that passion, to press on, to not let your life become like a boat that's got these barnacles all over them and it's picked up all this stuff along the way. You are designed to be in union with the Creator and to manifest that in the way you live and that's what Paul says.
Pick up right there next week.