“Not 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. Brothers, 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, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”
~ Philippians 3:12-16
I had some wonderful moments last weekend. From Wednesday evening through very early Sunday morning, I was with some of our young people at the Sonshine Festival. While I’ll confess not all the bands at the festival appealed to me equally, there were some great musical moments over the weekend. The first big concert was a free Jars of Clay concert on Wednesday evening. This great, Grammy-award winning band has been popular since the mid-90’s. They have scored five gold albums, 2 platinum and one double platinum selling album and countless awards. And yet what they have been most passionate about since the early part of 2002 is the Blood:Water Mission. This is a plan to drill or repair 1000 wells in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, over 300 wells have been opened, bringing clean drinking water to over 100,000 people. These guys are not simply musicians; they are passionate Christians committed to the bigger picture.
And so I was very moved when I saw a big screen close up of the guitar player at the concert Wednesday evening. As the camera zoomed in on him playing, I noticed this tired looking musician had a quotation taped on the front of his very beat up guitar. It read simply, “We’re in this thing for the long haul.”
What a great attitude!
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. We’re in this thing for the long haul. We’re here to win the prize, not argue about the past. We strain toward what is ahead.
There are exciting days ahead of us here at Elim Church. We’re pressing on. We’re in this thing for the long haul. We’re reaching for all the best prizes!
I had another wonderful moment at the festival last weekend. During the concerts at main stage on Friday, I happened to sit behind a young couple and their baby daughter. She had a big pair of headphones protecting her ears and was sitting backwards in her grandmother’s lap in a lawn chair with mesh cup holders in the armrests. In each of the cup holders, her mother had sprinkled some Cheerios. And for whatever reason, this little girl was treating the whole situation like a big, comical adventure. She would wrinkle her face into a goofy expression and then smash her whole face down into the cup holder and stare at the Cheerios for a moment, then she would sit up, reach down into the cup holder and carefully select one Cheerio and then slam it into her mouth. She was doing the whole thing with rock star gusto. Every moment of her little operation was dramatic and wholehearted. She was hilarious! Her grandmother couldn’t stop laughing. I took a picture, which I sent to her youth pastor father when I got back to the city.
What struck me about this gorgeous, hilarious little girl, aside from her sense of humor, was the passion and commitment she displayed to her Cheerios mission. She didn’t care what people thought, she didn’t care about risks or appearances; she stuffed her whole, happy face into that cup holder! She put everything she had into what she was doing. And because she did so, everyone around her was blessed. It was just fun to be near her.
That ought to be us, shouldn’t it? We should be the happy kids committed to our exciting mission. We ought to be so happily and hungrily slamming our whole faces into what God has called us to do that everyone around will be blessed just to be nearby. We will inspire and entertain others without even trying. I like that picture!
I was also very moved last weekend by everything Tony Weedor shared with us on Sunday morning. As he shared his heart for Liberia and the suffering of our friends and fellow pastors, it became apparent that Tony Weedor is truly a guy “in this thing for the long haul.” It was a blessing just to be around him last weekend.
May God help us truly and fully become that sort of people! Amen.
