Don’t Look Down

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… Phil 3:13-14a

A fellow pastor plopped heavily into my guest chair. The laugh lines melted from his eyes and he let out that sigh that says here comes something deep. “After 30 years in my Christian walk, I don’t feel any different. I’m still battling the same old habits.” That struck a cord of agreement in my own life. It set me thinking, could it be we are no higher up on the mountain?

It is scary to look back down at our failures. Before Jesus, we had to look back; it was the epoch of looking back. The law required strict record keeping of slips and gains. I had to continually watch over my shoulder for mistakes. I was nervous and sick from my guilt. Everything depended on my ability to climb God’s impossibly holy mountain. When a flawed human is forced to live looking back on his mistakes, it is a dismal existence.

Jesus paid a dear price to keep us from the fright of looking back. How blessed I am to live in the age of looking forward. All hope, eternal treasure, and beauty are in front of me—at the top of the mountain. All I have to do from waking till sleeping each day is look forward. Because of the substitution on the cross, the failures of my past are non-existent. They have been erased from the annals of time. And whatever mistakes I make between now and heaven will also crumble into oblivion the instant the present becomes the past. Now I look down the mountain and there is nothing but a few bright successes and many blank voids where my sins used to be. Actually, it is a rather boring view. Up ahead, now that is a wondrous landscape. It is steep, but in the most treacherous places are bright colors of future success. The top is crowned with spikes of yellow-white beams shooting off the paradise wherein my Favorite dwells.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, Keep me looking forward to You.