Welcome to Day 2334 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom Philippians-9 Hanging Tough and Looking Up – Daily Wisdom Putnam Church Message – 02/04/2023 Joy in Sharing – Hanging Tough and Looking Up – Philippians 3:12-21 Last week, our focus was a comparison message titled Human Rubbish vs. Divine Righteousness. We learned that all human efforts to live a life pleasing to God apart from Christ are pointless and fruitless. Today, we focus on Standing Firm without Standing Still in a message titled Hanging Tough and Looking Up. Today's scripture passage is Philippians 3:12-21 on page 1829, in your Pew Bibles. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, 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, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 15 All of us, then, 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. 16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained. 17 Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. In a predominantly humanistic society like ours, it’s not uncommon to hear the glories of humanity exalted in exaggerated terms. Our “open-minded” media parades before our eyes immoral living as a virtue. They promise social progress through secular and even anti-Christian means. From politics to education, from spirituality to ethics, our sophisticated, twenty-first-century world functions on the presupposition that the only thing standing in the way is backward-thinking Neanderthals who can’t pull their noses out of an ancient, outdated book like the Bible. Yet God has chosen to leave believers on this earth, not to retreat from its pain and suffering, but to engage it—up close and personal. This calling requires us to strap in for a bumpy ride, to hang tough for the long haul. On this rough road between Christ's first and second comings, we must keep our heads up, our eyes forward, and our hearts heavenward. The Christian life is a marathon—not through the level, paved streets of a clean and friendly city, but across rocky, strenuous, dangerous terrain filled with pitfalls and predators. It’s comforting to know that we’re not the first Christians to make this journey through a wicked, hostile world. In many ways, the world is much better...
