In Philippians 3:12-21, the message centers on pressing on toward christ. Explore Philippians 3:12–21 and discover how hunger, humility, and perseverance help us press forward as God continues His transforming work. Rather than treating the passage as abstract theology, the sermon traces what these truths reveal about God, the gospel, and the way followers of Jesus are called to live.
A major emphasis is the believer's response to God through prayer, surrender, worship, and spiritual hunger. The message challenges passive Christianity and invites listeners to pursue God intentionally, trusting that transformation grows as we bring our desires, habits, and decisions under the authority of Scripture. The goal is a faith that moves beyond information into communion with God and obedient action.
Along the way, the message engages themes including Philippians 3:12-21, pressing on toward christ, philippians 3, 1221 hunger. These ideas help place the primary passage within the larger story of Scripture and show how its theology speaks to real spiritual formation. At its heart, the sermon helps answer questions such as: What does Philippians 3:12-21 teach about pressing on toward christ? It also considers how should pressing on toward christ shape the way Christians live?
For someone studying this passage, exploring the Christian faith, or looking for practical biblical teaching, this sermon offers a clear path from the text to everyday discipleship. The invitation is to hear what Scripture says, receive it with humility, and take the next faithful step in following Jesus.
What does Philippians 3:12-21 teach about pressing on toward christ? | How should pressing on toward christ shape the way Christians live? | How can believers apply Philippians 3:12-21 in everyday life?
Philippians 3:12-21, pressing on toward Christ, philippians 3, 1221 hunger
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I love Philippians because it is the most one of the most joyfilled letters that Paul ever wrote. Like he he talks to the Corinthians, the Galatians, and Colossians, and all these different people. And he's just smacking them around. And then Philippians is just like, "You guys are amazing. I love you." And and and so it just warmed my heart when God was like, "We need to be in Philippians this summer." And I was just like, "Great. I can just love on some people." And then I'm getting texts and I was like, "Bro, you beat me down on Sunday." like, "Okay, I need to be I need to be more like Paul. I need to be more loving." Um, but but how many of you would agree with this statement that you are a work in progress? Let me see your hand. Say, "I'm a I'm a work in progress." Praise God. We got some humble people here in the church today. We've got room to grow in our lives. And I would argue that every one of us could share multiple reasons or ways that God is doing some things in us and working in us right now. It could be God's working on our faith, building our faith. God's working on our theology and and shifting some things, what we believe about him and what we believe about what he's doing in the world and within the church. He may be working on some disciplines in your life and some patterns and structures that you can begin to to bring in some practices for you to grow in Christ. God may be working on some healing in you, not just physically, but emotionally and mentally and spiritually. areas of your past that you need to let go of. How many of you know that a life of freedom means that we need to let some baggage go? Like it's really hard to move through the airport when you're dragging three bags behind you. God may be teaching you how to trust him, how to fully surrender our lives to him. And maybe God's improving your heart for others. This is a big one. Serving others with love. Maybe he's building a life of prayer in you right now. praying for the very people that you used to hate, the people that you strongly disliked. Maybe it's the people on the opposite side of the political line that you've drawn in your life, those people that you couldn't stand, you detested, but now God is moving on your heart and you're beginning to pray for them and love them and things are shifting. Praise God. Maybe God's working on your marriage or working on you as a as a single person, finding contentment in the walk that he has you in, bringing you into unity with him. And maybe the Lord's helping you forgive somebody who really hurt you. It's amazing to me how the God who never changes is always doing something new in our lives. Right? We serve the same God. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's a God who never changes. But the Bible says he doesn't change, but he wants to continually change us, doing a new thing within us. The God who never changes is always doing something new. That's because we are all a work in progress if we are followers of Jesus. And I love this statement and and maybe you want to write this down because I might say it a few more times today as we look at Philippians 3. I'm not where I want to be, but I'm not where I used to be because God's not done with me. Somebody say amen in the house. I'm I'm not where I want to be. Can Can anybody attest to that? Like I'm not where I want to be. I know I'm a WORK IN PROGRESS. I KNOW I GOT SOME things to to shift and work on in my life. But thank God, I'm not where I used to be because my God is not done with me. If I'm drawing breath today, he still has a work to do within me. Amen. >> That's good. >> If you want to grow, you're going to need to shift your mentality into this place, the place of I've got room to grow. I've got some work that I can still do in my life. I have not arrived. First thing you're going to see in scripture today that this growth in your life, this work in progress is going to require humility before God. We if you want to write, take notes, write that down. First thing is humility. And the second thing is a hunger for God. humility and hunger. If you're going to open up your life to let God do some things in you, it's going to require humility before him, saying, "Man, I I do not have it all figured out." As your pastor today, I do not have it all figured out. I need help. I need the Lord. I need the Holy Spirit. And this is a humility that we can walk in. And then a hunger for God looks like, Lord, you can have every part of my life. Just as we sung that in worship today, every part of me, the little things, everything in between, all of those things, everything that I find glory in in myself, Lord, I give it to you because I'm hungry for more of you. I desire for you to have every part of my life, my past, my present, my future, everything. God, I want to give you all access to me. So I want to ask you, is there is there a humility in you to say, God, you can move in me? You can have access to my whole life. Have you submitted humbly every area of your life? Are you willing to say, "God, I I know you want to do some things in me. I know you're not done with me. I know there's there's more to this walk and journey in living worthy of the gospel. So, I want to commit myself all of myself to you. It's it's giving the all access backstage pass to Jesus where nothing is off limits. Nothing's off limits. Have you ever been in a conversation and and somebody says something that kind of triggers you and you just go, "Pause. I don't want to talk about that. We're not going to put God on pause today. I remember uh having a great soccer coach in high school. He was this British dude, amazing accent, awesome dude. And he would always pull me aside during practice and he would start the conversation like this. He say, "Can I tell you something that you may not want to hear?" That's always a fun way to start a conversation, right? And I'm like, in the moment I'm like, well, I'm like 17, 18 years old. You're my coach and I'm trying to get better. I know I haven't arrived, right? Humility, right? But if I don't know where I need to improve, if nobody tells me that I'm just going to keep doing the same thing that I've been doing, I'm going to keep screwing up in the same way. And he was really good at the sandwich technique. Y'all familiar with the sandwich technique? This is very effective on me. So if you have bad news, give me a sandwich. All right? Where you take a really good positive thing like Nick, you're really good at X. You're awesome at this. Like you're like in soccer, it's like you're really aggressive. Like you're hurting your own players when you're practicing. You're very aggressive, but you need to work on your field awareness. You need to bring your head up and you need to look around. Because when you do, man, you can really feed the ball to other people on the team. Sandwich technique, right? Something good, something to improve on, and then something good at the end. And it's funny because I could easily go like, "My coach just told me I really suck at this, right? My coach just told me I'm I I need I'm not good at this." And I can immediately go like, "Well, then I guess I'm just never going to be good at this." Because how many times do we take that attitude? Somebody brings you some bad news about how you treated them or said this or said that and then they begin to go like they play the martyr card. Well, I guess this is just how it's going to be moving forward. This is just who I am. I'm not going to change, right? It's really quiet in here because we've done it. Rather than walking away saying, you know what, he's right. Gosh, he's right. humility. I'm I'm getting better, but I need to continue to improve in this area. Right? How many of you again, you've got room to improve. You got room to grow. And so, with that, the question I want to ask is, are you ready to really give God every part of your life? Because I know God has a plan for me. I know God, he's got a playbook for me to run. But in order to run the play the best, I need to be allin. I need to be coachable. I need to understand where my knowledge ends and my coach's knowledge begins and things can begin to shift me into the next level. And as we look in Philippians today, if we really believe that God wants to do some things in us, then we have to have this humility and hunger for God. And that was Paul's attitude. For those of you that haven't been here in this series, Paul has been writing this letter from a prison in Rome. He's been chained up to a wall. He's been tortured many, many times. We we we have a picture. I don't know if we have it today, but the conditions were not great. Not a lot of sunlight. The food wasn't awesome. There's like a hole in the ground for where he can go potty. You know, I have young kids, so I say potty, not going to the bathroom. Okay. And he writes all of this and we saw in the last couple of weeks he begins to speak about how he had this high Jewish heritage status, right? He was the rabbi of rabbis, the Hebrew of Hebrews. He was so zealous for Judaism that he was actually persecuting and killing Christians before Jesus got a hold of his life and brought him close. He went from being the top of the the line Hebrew to now being a leading voice within the church of Jesus. Paul was using a mighty way and he was writing this letter to the Philippian church again from this prison. Even though he had this voice, this influence, this position in his life, this authority, he was always committed to submitting his life to God to be transformed. And he would even say, "God is still doing a work in me." And there's even this beautiful progression if you actually read the the letters that he wrote in order. He starts off by saying, you know, I'm this great apostle or I'm the least of the apostles. I'm the least of the disciples. And it begins to pro progress lower and lower until one of his final letters he says,"I am the chief of all sinners." And it wasn't him blowing smoke. It was this progression of the Lord bringing him lower and lower and lower in humility. And it's powerful. Paul realized that he was a work in progress. And last week, we landed on this place where Paul is talking about being found in Christ. Somebody say in Christ. We're found in Christ because Christ has us. Paul was combating the religious Jewish Christians who were forcing Hebrew traditions onto new believers, saying, "Yeah, you might have accepted Jesus, but now you got to go get circumcised. You might have accepted Jesus, but now you got to follow all of these rules and your diet and all these different things." And Paul's like, "No, no, no, no, no. We're not doing this." And Paul said, "If anybody has a reason to boast, I do. I was this top level Jewish leader and all of it is rubbish. All of it means nothing. It's absolutely meaningless compared to the greatness of knowing Jesus Christ and being found in him. I want to I want to recap some of these scriptures here. It says in Philippians 3:7-9, "But whatever gain I had, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and I count them as rubbish in order that I might may gain Christ. Paul's saying, I want you all to be able to find me in Christ and not having a righteousness of my own. And then he starts to unpack all of these things. I want to be found in him in Christ. And it looks like I knowing knowing him, knowing the power of his resurrection, knowing the power that he has over the enemy and over sin and all of these different things because of this life that he has found in Christ. And his desire, his goal, his push is, I want to be found in Christ. I want to be found in Christ. This life isn't all there is. I'm going to live forever with the Lord. But while I wait until that day comes, I can begin to live with him now, having relationship with him. And honestly, this is my prayer for anybody chasing the ladder in your life where you're chasing promotion or you're chasing elevation or position or titles. Because Paul is pretty clear on this. You can have it all and still have nothing if you don't have Jesus. Philippians 3:9 says, "And be found in him, hidden in Christ, abiding in Christ, found in Christ, in Christ." [clears throat] It's a phrase that Paul actually uses close to 200 times all throughout the letters that he writes in the New Testament. And it talks about this inhabitation. That's really the word for abiding, inhabiting. [clears throat] It's my habitat. Does Jesus inhabit our life? Is our habitat in Christ? For the Christian, we are invited to abide, find habitat, and remain in Jesus. And Paul's saying, "This is the life that I want more than accolades, more than any other stuff. When you see me, you should see a guy that rests in the Lord. We're hidden in him." Acts 17:28, "For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of our own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. And then going into this second half of Philippians 3, Paul starts to get really, really honest. He says in 3:12, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect." Paul's saying again, he suffered greatly for the sake of Christ. And he's saying what we had said earlier. He's like, "I'm not where I used to be. Or I'm not where I want to be. I haven't attained it yet. I haven't gotten to the the place that I'm desiring to go that God desires for me to go, even though he's accomplished so much. I mean, he's written more letters to the church than any of the other apostles." But sometimes when we have this I've arrived mentality, it keeps us from learning more and growing more in Christ. When we think we know everything, we really know nothing. And Paul is greater than any pastor that I know alive today in terms of output and anointing and all the things that he accomplished. And the fact that he's still saying God's still doing a work in me is incredible. It shifts my heart. It shifts my mentality. If I'm in prison for God, if I'm in prison because of my relationship with Christ, I'd probably start thinking God must be done with me. Right? When all the doors in your life begin to close and you start feeling more and more isolated, it's very easy to drift into this thinking of like, God must be done with me because the doors are closing. God must be done with me because things aren't opening up and I'm I'm just stuck here in this moment. But Paul is saying, no, I haven't attained all the things that God wants to do in me. I'm not perfect yet, but I'm continuing to move forward in him. Not that I have already obtained this or I'm already perfect, but it says I press on to make it my own >> because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Knowing God and being found in Christ is ultimately his goal and it should be our goal. And knowing and realizing that we haven't attained it yet, we haven't gotten there yet is a sign of humility for us. I'm not there yet. I haven't figured it all out, but I am pressing towards this life in Christ. There's areas in me that still need to be cut out, that still need to shift. There's mindsets and even bad theologies that I've been walking in that I need to I need to continue to pursue him. I still need to be hungry for him. And I need to have the humility enough to to go, I haven't figured it all out. Why? Paul said, "Because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Church, he loves you today. He's made you his own. He desires so much more for every single one of us. And again, we can take this this whole word and puff up our chest and be like, "You don't know how long I've been following Jesus. But can we come to this place where our motivation to get up in the morning is because God loves us. He's desperate for us. He wants to live within us, dwelling within us. And he wants us to be in him fully. We get to walk with God because God said, "You are mine. You're his church. It's not some simple truth that we can just put up on the refrigerator and no, this needs to be at the very center and core of who we are because he made decisions. God made decisions to send his son for us so that we can be made his. And because of that, we respond with,"Lord, how can I live better for you?" That's actually like the new definition of excellence for my life right now. Because many times we can say, "Oh, excellence, here's the bar." Well, what happens when I achieve this excellence and I get to this bar or get to this level? The goalpost moves, right? So my attitude has be begun to shift where I go, man, I feel like I'm achieving excellence, but Lord, how can I do this better? How can I make this better? Even if you're serving on a team here on Sunday, like it's very easy to be critical of this isn't right. That isn't right. Even in your own job, this isn't right. That isn't right. But what if we began to say, God, how can I make this better? How can I better live for you in this? How can I continually grow more and more and more and not just get to one level and begin to grow stagnant? Because again, no one has ever arrived. Everyone has growth that God is wanting to do in them. And you're here today because you have growth that you need to go through. As a church, we do not believe that a Christian can attain Christian perfection here on this earth. Only Jesus is perfect and we just simply follow him. Our church mission is to lead people to live worthy of the gospel. And until you stop breathing on this earth, you have room to grow in your devotion to Jesus. I know I keep repeating this over and over again, but I want us to sit in this place and allow it to lead us to a place of humility before we get deeper into all of this because it's about to get really fun. So understand, we don't believe in Christian perfection here on earth. But secondly, we do not believe that God is done with you because you just said yes to Jesus. You may be saved. You may have gotten baptized, but that's not the finish line. That's the starting line, church. >> That's the starting line. >> You think, "I got baptized. I'm good. I can live life however I want." If that's your attitude, you clearly do not understand that God has more for you. Paul's saying again in this verse, I'm pressing on. I'm doing my part in my devotion to Jesus. And all of that devotion is on me. So before we ever want to grow close to Christ, we have to understand that Jesus deeply desires for you to draw close to him. We live from that position of son and daughter. Not just in theory, but in reality where I'm not trying to earn it because he's earned it. But now I get to live in a way that's just in a holy hot pursuit of him, fully devoted, growing continually. There are there are the pieces to my life and my faith and my walk that are just that are beautiful. And God begins to reveal incredible things and and revelations to us. He begins to give you dreams and visions and begin to show you things in his word and it strengthens our faith and it's amazing. But again, I think sometimes we think of our faith as a puzzle to solve. Do we have any puzzle fiends here in the room? Anybody love a good puzzle? Come on, somebody. Here's the thing. in my house. Hey, in my house when my mom comes around or Britney comes around and she's got a puzzle, everything stops. We turn some music on and and depending on how many pieces are in that puzzle, we start setting aside. It's going to be two hours or it's going to be six hours, but we are all in locked in for this puzzle. This is how intense we get about puzzles in my family. We had a a Fourth of July puzzle. That thing was done in an hour and 45 minutes. >> 500 pieces. Come on, somebody. We were moving quick. I mean, there was four of us. All right, we're all working together as a team, but I but I don't know about you, but I have a strategy when I start doing puzzles. Do you guys you guys know the strategy? >> Do you have a strategy? >> You got to do the borders first, right? That that's that's what we do. I have a puzzle up here that I made. I'm very excited about this. My kids actually help me. Okay. So, it's it's kind of fun. But I always start with the borders, right? You you got your you got your pieces all lined up here. Oh, that felt good. You know the dopamine hit you get when you put a puzzle piece in there? That's why puzzles are awesome. All right. Like here's another I got another piece. Oh, yeah. Somebody Oh, no. My magnet. Okay. It's magnetic. Praise the Lord. Ah, it fits perfect. Hallelujah. This is great. I've got another one right here. Oh, yeah. Look at this. I've got my borders. I got Jesus in the center. This is great. Right? But when we treat our faith like a puzzle to solve, what do WE DO? WE BOX IN JESUS. We say, you know what? This is where he ends. This is ALL HE CAN DO. I'M GOING TO CHURCH. I'M LEARNING ALL THESE THINGS. MY THEOLOGY IS SHIFTING IN ALL THESE WAYS. And I start to put all the pieces together, right? Like, okay, my my theology is shifting on this right now, and God's beginning to reveal some things to me. Here's a new piece. Wow, it's beautiful. Kind of ugly at the same time, but it's okay. And we start to get into this mode of like, I'm trying to fit all the pieces together. Anyone else ever felt this way? Maybe it's just me. I'm trying to see how this in my faith connects to that, right? I don't understand why we're still tithing even though we're in the new covenant. This piece doesn't fit with that piece, right? I don't understand why why some people like say it's you're going to hell if you're drinking and then other people they're drinking all the time and they love Jesus. You know, I don't I don't understand these pieces. Or I begin to look into scripture and God begins to reveal things to me on a deeper level like we talked about during worship about the alabaster jar about the tears that were collected because when it said that she poured out her tears, how could she pour the tears out of her face? No, she had been saving those tears to pour out. And now there's a a beautiful new piece to this puzzle that I'm beginning to grow in. like, "Wow, God, this is so amazing. This is so beautiful. This is so awesome. I'm growing. Look at what you're doing, God. But then I get to where I think the end is." But God begins to say, "No, there's so much more." If you would just break out of the borders of of your faith, you'll begin TO SEE THAT THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO THIS IN YOUR LIFE. YOU HAVEN'T ARRIVED WHEN YOU GET TO WHERE YOU think the borders are. Yeah, >> that's good. >> THERE'S SO MUCH MORE THAT GOD WANTS TO GROW YOU IN AND shape you into. If you think that YOU HAVE ARRIVED, I'M SORRY, BUT YOU'RE PUTTING BORDERS ON WHO GOD IS AND WHAT HE CAN do in your life. We got Christ at the center. You guys knew I was going to do this, right? Hey, beautiful. It fits. And what's so interesting is I continue to grow and I see this. It's no longer a puzzle to be solved, but it's a mosaic of beauty that continues to shift. And I can take different pieces and and and place them here. And this is just why I love my relationship with Jesus because every day gets to be new and exciting and he's choosing to to speak to me and grow in me in all these different ways. And I can take another piece or I can hang out with somebody like like Blaine or Ryan or Hannah. Come on up here. That I gave them some pieces before the the the sermon today. Here's what's great. I can spend time with someone like Dena or Carlos and and God will begin to show me things that he's been showing them. Isn't this good? When we begin to rub shoulders with other believers, I begin to see there's a new piece here that fits in. Do you remember where you put it? Praise the Lord. Hey, we got one. And I'm like, "Oh man, Ryan, there's something that that God's been speaking to you. And now I get to pull from that. And now I have this new piece in the mosaic. Now I have this new area where God is beginning to to grow in me. And this love that he has for me and the love that is shared through brothers of faith where where I can hang out with Blaine and be like, "MAN, YOU READ THE BIBLE SO DIFFERENTLY than me. It's challenging me. It's shifting how I see the Lord, this other facet of him. And I I just love the image of the seraraphim up in heaven surrounding the throne of God, saying, "Holy, holy, holy." Every time they see a different facet, a different piece of the mosaic of God. And the pieces begin to come together. But I know there's always more. I'm not finished until I'm before him in heaven. Again, there's no end to what God wants to do in your life. So, why would we put borders on him? Why would we box him in? If it's true that we're found in him because he's made us his own, then our response is, "I'm pressing on to find that next piece. I'm pressing on for the next revelation, for the deeper work. Maybe there's an area in my life that needs to be pulled out, that needs to be changed, and there's a new piece that God's going to put in that hole that I feel in my heart. We never stop growing. We continue to move forward. It's part of our growing and maturing as believers. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do. He says, "One thing I do." If whenever someone says there's one thing, you better write this down. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. We have to forget what's behind us. And we have to press forward to the things that lie ahead. There's many times where we can look at our at our faith if we've been a Christian for a while and we can say, "Man, these were the golden eras of my life. When I was at this church, man, God was moving and signs and wonders and the fire of God would fall and all these things. Man, I remember that season when I prayed and I just immediately felt the presence of God." And we can hold on to those moments nostalgically and then we compare them to the new thing that God is trying to do and we get discouraged. And we say, "God, you're not moving like you used to move in my life. What's going on?" Because he begins to do a deeper work within you the closer that you get to him. He begins to take those pieces that you had and he begins to move them into different places for beauty, for growth. And it's really hard to grow and appreciate what God is doing now if we're stuck in the past. Yeah, that's good. >> We can look back with nostalgia, but we can't stay there. It says, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I press on towards the goal. What's the goal? To be in Christ Jesus. There it is again. And it's really interesting because this is kind of funny. When you go back and look at the verse before, throw that back up there for me. Verse 13, he says, "This one thing I do, one thing that I do." And I don't know if you noticed, but Paul didn't just say one thing. And we can laugh and be like, "Paul must not know how to count, right? He said two things. Forgetting what lies behind and then straining towards what lies ahead. The reason that he does this is Paul realizes is realizes in this moment that in order to do the one thing, there's often another thing in the way. If you want to lose weight, you got to stop eating ice cream >> and you need to work out, right? Sometimes I mean the the diet is one in the kitchen. All right. The body is built in the kitchen, right? And I love some ice cream. Built by Blue Bell, somebody Paul realizes in order to do the one thing, there's often another thing that's in the way of the one thing. And if you want to again lose weight, you got to stop eating ice cream and work out. If you want to grow your bank account, you're not just saving money, but you also have to stop spending it frivolously. Paul's understanding is, I want to lead you to the one thing, but many times there's one thing that is hindering you to get to that place. And it's just like when Jesus talked to the rich young ruler in Luke's gospel, he says, remember, he said, "Jesus, what's the what's the thing that I got to do in order to have eternal life?" And again, the man said he's following all the commandments. He's doing all the right things. Like we talked about last week, I'm doing all the right things, God. How am I going to inherit eternal life? And what does Jesus say? Jesus says, "One thing you still have to do. The one thing that is in the way of you stepping into all of this is you need to take all your money, give it to the poor, sell all your stuff, give it to the poor, and come follow me." It's not in following all these rules and all these laws. It's are you willing to lay down everything to follow him? Following him and being close to him in relationship because the thing that was in the way for this man to get him to Jesus was his money, his power. It was really an idol to him. And something I said during our prayer time today, the thing that we often fear to lose is the thing that we love the most. The thing that we fear to lose is oftentimes the thing that we love the most. If we're afraid to lose our money, if we're afraid to lose our kids or our spouse or our house, our job, that's often the thing that is higher up on the totem pole of what we love and what we follow. But how many of us want to be able to say, "Lord, I'm afraid. I'm fearful of losing your presence, Jesus. I have a holy fear of losing you. I don't want anything to stand in the way of me and you. I I want to be in you. And if there's anything in the way of that, Lord, I want to remove it. This needs to be the heart of every believer. It needs to be the heart of our of our church. If you want to do the one thing, if you want to chase after and press on towards the the prize and being in Christ Jesus, there might be something in the way that you need to push aside. There might be something that you're holding on to, baggage that you've been carrying through the airport of your life for years and years, and you keep wondering, "WHY DO I MISS MY FLIGHT? Why do I KEEP MISSING THE MARK? WHY DO I KEEP MISSING OUT ON the opportunities? It's because I'm carrying all this weight and all this baggage from gate to gate to gate. >> And I'm not beating you today. I'M BEATING DOWN ON MYSELF BECAUSE THERE'S SO MANY DOORS THAT HAVE SHUT IN MY FACE. NOT BECAUSE GOD SAID NO. IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS LATE, carrying so much hurt, living and trying to love people from a place of pain rather than being fully in Christ. Church, hear me today. Like I I there's a beautiful mosaic that the Lord wants to build within you. And and many of us feel like there's there's holes still and there's gaps, but really that that hole and that gap is just something that we've been holding on to that's taking up that space because and that's why the peace can't fit there. If we truly want to grow, if we truly want to move forward, if we want God to teach us and grow us and mature us, then we have to let some things go. And it's not just pain or trauma or unforgiveness. There's some areas of glory and arrogance that many of us sit ourselves in and go, I already have the whole picture. I already have the borders of of my faith. I've got this all figured out. But we need to allow God to remove that thought process. Again, I haven't arrived. I'm still a work in progress. Remember what Paul said? He said, 'I've been beaten 40 lashes minus one five different times. He was shipwrecked, left for dead. He was a drift at sea, and so much more. And Paul responds and he says, "Just forget all that stuff. I'm I'm I'm I'm pushing back the former things. Whatever I've suffered for the Lord, it's not to put me in a place of I'm better than everybody else. He says, "Forget all of that. God is still doing a work in me. God is still moving in my life and I'm moving forward in him." Because church, we live in a day and age of quitters. And we hear it all the time. It's really fun to to watch these reels on Instagram right now where we see a kid get a participation trophy and then a parent rips it out of his hand and throws it in the trash. Have you seen any of those videos? They're awesome. Yeah, you showed up and rode the bench the whole time. You get a trophy. Or we think, man, this is hard. Therefore, it must not be for me. Who told you that the Christian walk is easy? In our faith, we can hear verses like all of this and we can hear about pressing on and we look at Paul and we go, "Man, Paul hasn't even achieved this. He hasn't even gotten to this level. And if Paul's been throu
