12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, 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, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I think one of the reasons I like this passage so much is because of its comparison to an athlete competing. You can ask my mom, my dad, Alicia, or any of my coaches. I am a competitive person. I HATE it when I lose. Especially when I think that I could have won.
Focus was something I always had to work on and practice. It was and is easy for me to get distracted. I never had that singular focus on the playing field. Athletes who are able to just zone everything out amaze me. They want to achieve something so badly that everything else just doesn't matter.
That kind of focus is what Paul is talking about in chapter three. Earlier in the chapter he says that everything else besides knowing Jesus is nothing more than a pile of trash. The word he uses in Greek for 'pile of trash' is probably more accurately translated as 'pile of animal excrement, (and thats putting it gently). Paul is talking about his absolute desire and focus on knowing Jesus.
He pushes on towards the goal. He doesn't live in the past. He lives in the present in order to obtain the future. He is bound and determined to know Jesus and be with Him.
Recently I have been asking students what they want their legacy to be, or how they want to be remembered. One of the coming things that has come up is how hard it is to actually be remembered for what you want to be. It isn't often that everyone says the same thing about a person when you ask them. Especially when you want to be remembered for doing something with excellence.
No achievement comes easily or overnight. It takes everything you have to accomplish something that lasts or is remembered. Not even Mercury Morris, Don Shula, or the rest of the 1972 Undefeated Doplhins would say that their accomplishment was easy. They would probably say it was the hardest thing they had ever done in their whole lives, but it was also probably the most memorable.
Paul talks about striving to be like Jesus and to know Jesus. We need to be focused on that goal and not distracted by anything else. It won't be easy in fact it will probably be the toughest thing we try in life, but the prize is worth it. Everything else pales in comparison to the hope of knowing Jesus.
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