“But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
~Philippians 3:13b-14 (NIV).
According to Paul, we shouldn’t just have more; we need more.
But my point is still valid. At any time we can have more of this salvation experience; a fuller measure of it I mean. Paul is merely saying—in the succeeding few verses—it’s not only a right and a privilege, it’s what the Lord requires of us as we mature more and more.
Maturity in Christian Terms
This is a journey we’re on and not a destination that any one of us ‘arrives’ at. We may know this notionally and nod our heads but I wonder, especially within myself at times, i.e. my experience of my own faith, how often we’ll nonchalantly disregard growth opportunities because, well, we’re ‘mature’ already—supposedly.
This, of course, is just pride, re-badged.
Maturity under Christ is so rampantly incomplete during this life—even for the sixty or seventy year old—it’s not funny. Indeed, the more mature we become the more humble we should increasingly grow to be, knowing beyond knowledge how vulnerable we really are and how much still we do not know.
We Can Still Have More
The foregoing is a somewhat negative look at something that was always designed to have us thrilled in God for what possibilities actually remain ahead of us—this terrific and ever increasingly awe-inspiring life!
To think that God is that interested in us that he’s designed the potential for growth exponentially leaves us gasping for joy. He places no barriers in our way as we grow with him even through the clouds into the stratosphere of our spirituality.
We can have still more. When we’re satisfied with our bliss-filled condition’s to the point of only clamouring for more—a sort of very healthy greediness for personal growth with God pervading—we find more and more is gained. This truly is an incredible reality.
Why is it really that we have this burgeoning vista; the life engorged with more? God disengages the brakes when we venture alongside him and he takes us further in our journey to him—contingent only on our end of things. He completely delimits us.
A Vitalising Reality
This is it; not to ‘re-vitalise’ but to vitalise. We have so much more to experience and so much more ahead of us. It’s the condition of unconditionality we enjoy. There is nothing diminishing here; nothing at all.
Should we not entirely go on with God?
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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