Growing Up Letting Go

Growing Up

Letting Go

Each victory and each defeat in our lives

is only a season it is not to be our life.

Growing up and moving forward cannot

be spent undoing the past or recreating it.

Growing up and moving forward has to do

with knowing your purpose and goal in life.

The past cannot be changed.

It is permanent.

You can spend a life time trying to

undo the past and never move forward.

  I remember as a boy playing on the swing

set one day and feeling like it was

the best thing I had ever experienced.

As the evening came I looked forward to

the next day to get back on the swing set.

For days I went back to the swing set and

never got the feeling I had that first day.

There are many things that can keep us holding on to the past.

It can be a joyful memory or a resentful regret.

Your past will always be a part of your today.

The question is…

Is your past holding you back or slowing

you down from the fullness of today?

I have watched the cycle of collectables.

I watched people collect the things of the 40’s

than the things of the 50’s became desirable,

after that the 60’s and 70’s.

Now the kids of the 80’s are collecting

the things they remember as a child.

The Apostle Paul had memories of great

accomplishments before he came to know Christ.

He considered hanging on to those things as

something that would keeping him from his

goal in life and that is growing up into Christ.

I have received some very nice awards in life

and it felt good when I received them but they

were like the swing set, a feeling never to have

again it was over and I needed to move on.

I have also experienced failure, failure

that took the wind out of my gut…

The feeling that made me feel like I could not go on.

That feeling of hurt and regret that

makes you feel you don’t want to go on.

   They were things I could not unravel, I could not fix.

In life we have things we want to hang on

to and things of our past that hang on to us.

Both will keep you from reaching

your purpose and goal of your life.

Each victory and each defeat in our

lives is only a season, it is not to be our life.

Growing up and moving forward cannot

be spent undoing the past or recreating it.

Growing up and moving forward has to do

with knowing your purpose and goal in life.

The Apostle Paul said it this way…

 “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.”

Paul knew his purpose and goal in life never changed,

it did not matter if he was rich or poor, in prison or free.

The neat thing about your purpose and goal in life

is it can be fulfilled anywhere, under any circumstance.

So to grow up we cannot spend

time trying to undo or redo the past.

God’s mercy that comes every morning

keeps you from having to undo the past.

Take advantage of the new

start and fulfill your purpose.

God’s grace that was on you in the past to accomplish

great things is on you to do greater things today.

What is holding you back from growing up?

Our purpose is not time related.

Our purpose is the same as Paul’s.

Paul pressed for it 2000 years ago in the

same way we are to press for it today.  

   

Scripture Reading NIV

Ephesians 4:15-16

15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

Philippians 3:7-16

7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

12 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. 13 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, 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 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.