During a Monday night football game between the Chicago Bears and the New York Giants, one of the announcers observed that Walter Payton, the Bears’ running back, had accumulated over nine miles in career rushing yardage. The other announcer remarked, “Yeah, and that’s with somebody knocking him down every 4.6 yards!” Walter Payton, the most successful running back ever, knows that everyone –even the very best– gets knocked down. The key to success is to get up and run again just as hard…TO KEEP PRESSING ON!
No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us…
Philippians 3:13-14
Everybody likes ‘new beginnings’, fresh starts! Paul, the early Church’s missionary and gospel preacher was once Saul of Tarsus, its menace and persecutor of Christians…. But, that all change when he had an encounter with a Holy God that totally transformed his life.
When a person encounters a holy God a few things happen…I think 3 of those thing are:
1. The person who had the God encounter will never be the same
2. You wont have to tell him/her that they just encountered God
3. A commission will usually follow
I love the story of SaultoPaul….A guy who (key word here) “Thought” he was doing the good work by killing Christians became one of the greatest men of faith after his encounter with a holy God!
An encounter will do more for you than 1000 sermons can ever do!
His life after his encounter was not all peachy, he faced imprisonment, hunger, beatings, and death But he couldn’t quit…You know why?
Because of the encounter he had with a Holy God on the road that night...
with that in mind he made a startling statement in Phil. 3:13-14 that can help us as christ followers today have a fresh start and ‘press on’ in our faih, work and witness, no matter what…
Hudson Taylor, missionary to China, pronounced: “I am willing to go anywhere, as long as it is forward, onward and Christward’
A story I read on www.sermonillustrations.com
Young William Wilberforce was discouraged one night in the early 1790s after another defeat in his 10 year battle against the slave trade in England. Tired and frustrated, he opened his Bible and began to leaf through it. A small piece of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. It was a letter written by John Wesley shortly before his death. Wilberforce read it again: “Unless the divine power has raised you up… I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that (abominable practice of slavery), which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God, and in the power of His might.”
We know from History that he stayed the course…And eventually won the Victory over the slave trade.
I want you to know, he has not forgoten about you.
when life seems to have more questions than answers it’s hard to trust..Press on!
When you feel like throwing in the towel, you feel you don’t matter anymore…Press on!
When hope seems gone, you don’t even have a song..Press on!
When you feel like you fought your last fight..Press on!
When you feel you have preached your last sermon..Press on!
When you feel like you have sung your last song..Press on!
When you feel like you can’t go on PRESS ON!
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