A Blessing in the Pressing Essay Example

You Can Dancer even Sundays Best that leave you inspired.

Then you have the shows that in my opinion are the biggest waste of time and I cringe whenever I see them, Pimp My Ride, Wife Swap, The Bachelor, The Baccalaureate, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance©e, Basketball Wives, Single Ladies, Keeping Up With the Sardinian, Jersey Shore, For the Love of Ray J, Real Housewives, or even New York goes to Hollywood. Now I must admit that I have occasionally watched these reality shows, but my all time favorite Reality show is "Survivor". Survivor first broadcast on CBS Dock In Z Ana now In 2 1 Is In Its outhunt season. Revolver Is a snow Dates on stranding a group of strangers as a tribe in a remote location, where they must fend for food, water, fire, and shelter for themselves, while competing in challenges to earn rewards and immunity from being voted off by the other members of the tribe. The last challenger remaining at the end of the competition wins the $1 million dollar ash prize and the title of "sole survivor". (PUT A PIN RIGHT THERE, WE'LL COME BACK TO THAT) Lets go to the text.

In the book of Philippians, Paul is said to be in prison, and he is writing to the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord. The commentary suggests that the general tone of the letter reflects Pall's gratitude toward the Philippians and his Joy in God. The commentary further suggests that Pall's writing of this letter from Jail rejoicing in the Lord is little odd, it's a little strange; however Paul had the ability to recognize opportunities

for sharing the gospel even in apparent setbacks.

This was the origin of Pall's Joy: He saw God working through the difficult situations that he faced and in order to express all of this to the church in Philipp, he put in a form of a letter. However, it is the third chapter of Philippians, where Paul tells the readers that he has not yet attained all that God has for him and that he is not perfect. But he doesn't stop there; he goes on further to say that he stays on this Journey for the Lord so that he can get what God's got for him.

But guess what Paul doesn't even stop there he goes on further to describe his ongoing Christian Journey with Lord as a ace. A race where Paul says he runs for an imperishable crown, and not a perishable one. A race where he says he will press toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling in Christ Jesus. Even in the book of Corinthians, Paul describes the isthmian games. Corinth was the site where these games took place. We even find that the isthmian games were very similar to Survivor.

Contestants in the isthmian games endured ten long months of mandatory training, and anyone who failed to complete this training was barred from competing in the games, but the highlight of all this opal was the endurance race. It was this race where you let it all hang out and folk could really see what you were made of. It was also the endurance race of the isthmian games where Paul used as an illustration

to compare the faithful Christian race. Well preacher what does that mean, I'm glad you asked. Our life, our Journey, our road to heaven is merely an episode of Survivor!

Just as we have to endure, the survivor contestants have to endure, Just as we have to encounter hardships, the survivor contestants have to encounter hardships, Just like we stumble and fall when ere pressing our way, they stumble and fall as they press their way, but I'm glad today that when these things happen, God doesn't vote us off the show, I'm glad that when we slip and fall we still have a shot at the crown of life, I'm so glad that the Lord allows not only one person to win the title of "Sole Survivor", but he has equipped us all with the opportunity to claim ultimate victory in this Christian race.

You see this race that we run for God is not one of ease. God didn't ordain the road easy when we came out of the womb. Instead he molded and shaped us into what he wanted us to e and equipped us with the weaponry he knew we would need in order to complete the race without giving up. God knew that when he created his children that the race would cause us to stumble, but instead of the race getting the best of us, he gave us the knowledge and the wisdom of his word so that we could get back up and dust our SE o one AT ten problems welt our present generation Is Tanat we nave Torrent exactly why we run the race!

We have

lost our objective! Heaven should be our goal! Getting to Heaven is everybody goal, we Just forgot to do the things that gets us there. Somewhere along the line we forgot how to press our way, we forgot how to endure, and we forgot how to persevere. We expect things to arrive on time and if they are even 10 seconds late, we begin to worry; unfortunately, we have even begun to treat God like this. We want to know why this has to be like that and why that has to be like this.

But what we really don't understand is that we miss out on the most essential part of the Christian race which is the actual race, the actual running of the race because we would never know what it feels like to get tired and what it feels like to endure pain and heartache . That's why heaven could never be a mile away. When folks got tired of living this life here on earth they could Just walk a mile to heaven, without enduring anything.

The text says, "l press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling in Christens, but sometimes we as Christians mess up when we keep our eyes on the prize instead of the mark, in other words, we keep watching the trophy instead of watching the finish line. Then we wonder how so many people got in front of us and how we keep running into obstacles that could have been avoided. (ELABORATE HEREABOUT HOW TO GET BACK ON TRACK)There are three things we just understand that will get us on the right

track toward life everlasting, the first thing we must do is: Understand that we're not perfect! It's in the 12th verse of the lesson text where Paul states READ THE 12TH VERSE) And this certainly does not Just apply to the young people! Nobody was made perfect; everybody is not going to have all the right answers to everything. The Christian Journey has been designed for you to learn life lessons along the way. Sometimes it takes for us to experience a stumble in the road so that we may remember why we run this race.

Youth, God wants us to pep our focus and not get caught up in what the world has to offer cause in the end, when Judgment day comes Drake and his "trust issues" can't get us to heaven, Ill Wyandotte teach nobody "How to Love", and Jay- Z can do all the "Throne Watching" he wants, but he still can't get us into heaven, our actions throughout this Christian race is what solidifies our salvation. The second thing we must do is: Forget those things that are behind us!

The commentary suggests that Paul could not obliterate the past from his memory, but he refused to let his past obstruct his progress toward is goal. He used the word FORGETTING instead of the word forget to indicate that it's an ongoing process, there's going to be more than one thing that's going to try and stop you from reaching your goal, but we have to remember that the things that are behind you are Just that! Its history and we have the responsibility of leaving it there.

The things

that tried to hurt you, the things that tried to knock you down in 2010 or even the things that tried to knock us down last week or even this morning. The people that tried to put us down, those moments when you thought you were going o lose your mind, those times when you thought about Just ending it all. Or what about the times when friends talked behind your back, or even the times when family talked behind your back, those times when you couldn't see your way out of mess.

The times when it felt like the only option you had in the world was crying or am I the only one who stayed up crying and praying all night waiting on the Lord to answer? It's so important for us to leave things behind us because otherwise we become bitter consultants walking around welt all type AT Dagger Ana now many AT you Know Tanat it's hard to press on when you have things holding you down? My good friend Eureka Baud said it best.... The third and final thing we must do in order to put ourselves on the right track to achieving our heavenly goal is to simply Press!

Pressing and faith go hand in hand as it pertains to this text because it's impossible to move forward toward a goal without first believing that there is a goal in the first place. Your faith must come into play. God wouldn't take us through it if he wasn't going to lead us to it. He wouldn't take us through the heartache and the pain; he wouldn't have had us

endure hardships if there wasn't something on the other side that was for our good. We have to press on even when we don't feel like it, this involves our faith too!

When we can't get up the nerve to press, we have to press on anyway, that's why I like that song that says "l think I'll run on to see what the ends going to be" I may not like my present situation, and I know I'm going thru some things but I'm going to do like Eddie Snickers and keep on trucking because I know and my faith in the lord tells me that whatever I may go through, that too shall pass!...... Well preacher I heard everything o said and I'm still not convinced............ .Well how about this: 1 .