Moving Forward In Your Faith

Introduction:

When Cortez disembarked his five-hundred men upon the eastern coast of Mexico, he set fire to the ships. As his warriors watched their means of retreat burn, they knew they were committed with their lives to conquer the new world for Spain.

Similarly, everyone who sets foot on the shore of discipleship is called upon to burn his own ships in the harbor. We Christians cannot spend our days looking back. We must move forward. Jesus said: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). There is no compromising center, no relaxed position. The Christian life is one of tension and triumph.

G. Curtis Jones, 1000 Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1986), 79.

Pt. 1: We Move Forward Having Spiritual Discontentment

The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

A. W. Tozer

*Alfred Lord Tennyson*

Pt. 2: We Move Forward with a Single Commitment

This one thing - en - one!

*Sara DiGennaro - amnesia*

The last thing she remembered was hanging out the clothes. She got in her car and went to a shopping center. And there at a bank she felt as someone shot her on the left side of her temple. Unknown to her she had suffered an aneurysm. The weak wall of an artery had burst. When she woke up, she thought she was 23 years old. They brought in 3 teenage girls and a tall boy. She looked at them and asked, “where are my children?” For she thought she was the mother of three small girls. Somewhere in that incident she had suddenly lost 16 years of her life. She did not recognize her home. She couldn’t remember how to cook. She took some consolation in that she could go out to her car and driver her 1956 Ford somewhere. But when she got out to her car, it wasn’t that at all - a 1970’s Pontiac. That last president she could remember was Eisenhower and the year was now 1976. Finally, she asked a doctor, “will I get back those 16 years?” And he told her, “No, I don’t think so.” She asked, “well where did they go?” He responded, “well, we don’t really know, those years are gone.” There are two kinds of Amnesia they tell us - retrograde amnesia (that amnesia where you forget some or all of what happened to you before an accident or illness) & Anterograde amnesia (can’t remember anything after an accident or illness - unable to form new memories). But in this text, the apostle speaks of another kind of amnesia. He speaks of an spiritual amnesia, a holy amnesia. A forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

*Windshield vs. Rear view mirror*

Pt. 3: We Move Forward Looking to a Glorious Fulfillment

750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers and Writers 247: Goals

It was a fog-shrouded morning, July 4, 1952, when a young woman named Florence Chadwick waded into the water off Catalina Island. She intended to swim the channel from the island to the California coast. Long-distance swimming was not new to her; she had been the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.

The water was numbing cold that day. The fog was so thick she could hardly see the boats in her party. Several times sharks had to be driven away with rifle fire. She swam more than fifteen hours before she asked to be taken out of the water. Her trainer tried to encourage her to swim on since they were so close to land, but when Florence looked, all she saw was fog. So she quit … only one-half mile from her goal.

Later she said, “I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen the land, I might have made it.” It wasn’t the cold or fear or exhaustion that caused Florence Chadwick to fail. It was the fog.

Many times we too fail, not because we’re afraid or because of the peer pressure or because of anything other than the fact that we lose sight of the goal. Maybe that’s why Paul said, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

Two months after her failure, Florence Chadwick walked off the same beach into the same channel and swam the distance, setting a new speed record, because she could see the land.

Failure, Perseverance

You can’t be a casual Christian in that are a casual member of a civic club or an intermittent member of an athletic club or passive member of a country club. Its another league!