Are We There Yet?

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. —Philippians 3:14

A few years ago, I visited someone in a Pittsburgh Hospital. I had been to this particular hospital before, but I had moved and needed to find a new route. Also different from my earlier trips to this hospital was that I now owned a GPS, Global Positioning System—a computerized map that navigates using data from satellites orbiting the earth.

It all seemed simple enough. I punched the address 5230 Center Avenue, Pittsburgh into my GPS. Everything went well and looked familiar for the first hour, but then the GPS instructions began to take me along the Ohio River to the northwest side of the city. Something was drastically wrong. After several double checks on the address and a brief call to my brother-in-law in Plum, I discovered my destination was Centre Avenue (spelled “re”) and not Center Avenue. It appears your GPS is only as good as the destination you enter.

You may not have a GPS. You may not even own a car, but we all have an internal GPS. We have hopes, dreams, and desires of who we want to become and what we want to achieve in life. We might not write it down, but there is a default setting in each of us that pushes us forward to our destination. As a small baby, it is simply to survive. Eat, p- -p, and sleep. We seek nourishment, love, and protection. As we grow older our goals change to possessions, houses, marriage, children, success, power, winning a $1.6 Billion lottery, or simply peace of mind. 

A good question for each of us to ask ourselves is, “What is my ultimate goal in life?” Or put another way, “What would success look like to me?” People often talk about “when their ships comes in.” What would your ship look like? When would you know that it had have arrived?

The Apostle Paul writes in Philippians 3 about giving up everything past, present, and future in his life for the privilege of knowing Jesus Christ and having a righteousness that comes by faith in Him (vss. 8-9). His ultimate goal was no longer to be a successful and influential Jewish rabbi. He no longer sought to be the holiest and most law abiding person on earth. Paul now desired to know the power of God that worked in Jesus’ life and to be conformed to Jesus image in power, in sufferings, and even in death. His internal GPS was now set correctly; it was set on Jesus Christ and the resurrection from the dead (vs. 10).

Paul declares that he had not arrived, but he kept pressing on. He could be certain he was making the correct choices and turns because he had the correct destination in mind. He forgot his past goals, past failures, and past accomplishments, and moved forward in his Christian journey. “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:14).

What is your internal GPS’s destination?  Are you confidently moving closer to God in Jesus Christ? Are you becoming more faithful, more loving, and more like Jesus each year? Jesus has gone before us to Heaven and prepared a place for each of us. Make Jesus the Lord of your life and set your focus, your goals, and your ultimate destination on Him. Let us confidently move forward in this life with peace, joy, and power. Let us focus our eyes on Jesus.