Looking Back but living forward.

Beginning today I will make people throughout the earth terrified because of you. When they hear reports about you, they will tremble with dread and fear.'"

I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised Him from the dead. I want to suffer with Him, sharing in His death,

so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,

I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

INTRODUCTION

Good Morning Southpointe!!!

Congrats on your second year anniversary, Here at our campus church!!

Praise God, We have seen great progress!! I am so thankful for our Campus Pastor David and Becky. They have been doing a wonderful job! How about acknowledging that this morning!!

We have gone from a rental store front, to this building here today! God has been Good to us.

I am very thankful that you have chose to be part of Southpointe. We are a very strong church, our main campus in Fort Smith is going strong and God is truly blessing.

We have future goal here and other places throughout Arkansas and Oklahoma that we are looking at starting more campus churches.

Thank you for your service to the Kingdom of God, and to the ministry of Southpointe.

But I would like to talk to you this morning about Looking back but living forward.

Life is in a state of swift transition as the Word of God declares it this way.

For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

Or James said this:

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

I am starting to understand that because there seems to be more time behind me now then before me.

And often times we wondered where the years go.

But living is still great and filled with the blessings of God.

I have found that out as I start look and living in the right perspective.

And I had also notice that the life of the church is the same way.

We are in the second year! I remember our first meeting to start this campus church it was like yesterday.

I remember go to the district office and talk to Brother Cargile about what I felt God wanted me to do and then We have a meeting in the hotel conference room, it was exciting but yet it was stressful.

I remember the first service in the building down the street, and then I remember more into the store front.

Then moving in here and we find that we was in constant state of change.

Just like our life, I think you know that the church has a life.

And Life itself should be living in terms of the past, the present, and the future.

If life is to have meaning and fulness, none of these areas are insignificant. They each play a vital role in making life more abundant.

Apostle Paul in calls to our attention a nation that misplaced its past, causing a loss of a generation.

In their past, they were actively involved for 40 years and made 443 projected moves.

Yet, because of their thoughts were totally in the past they ended up going nowhere.

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;

And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;

And did all eat the same spiritual meat;

And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

Now understand they experience the spiritual blessings because they were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They ate spiritual meat and drank spiritual drink but they failed with mind-set for their past.

Churches can’t move forward when we are standing still in our past.

The killer saying of many churches, well we don’t or never did it like that!

Do you know that there are things that I do now that I didn’t do in the past.

Like I don’t comb my hair anymore, I use to spray hairspray not anymore.

I use to have no trouble tying my shoes string standing up and now I sit down and still struggle with it, I am telling you the struggle real.

Hey, I remember as a kid go out to the outhouses in cold and dark night to go to the restroom, but I don’t do that.

I remember the old water cooler, television att.

But many churches and people still are living in their past, and to live in just that dimension is slave, a servant to their past.

Israel, in our text this morning was standing at the crossroad of greatness.

There is a time in our lives and the church lives to look back at the past and our abundant blessings, think about them Abraham’s faith in Genesis, being redeemed in the blood the lamb in Exodus, the worship in Leviticus.

And Israel can draw strength from her past, but what we must notice is that God is moving them from the past to the present and then to the future.

Deut 2:2 And the LORD spake unto me, saying,

Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward.

Ye have compassed this mountain long enough!

A mountain is anything that will keep you from moving forward to your future.

Understand I did say anything that will keep your from moving forward to your future.

Because it could be your past or your present that is keeping you from your future.

Apostle Paul said this:

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ

and become one with Him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God's way of making us right with Himself depends on faith.

Apostle Paul was saying first let’s deals with the things of his past that he value so things where worthless, it was just all about Christ that was important to him.

But then in verse 8, he said everything else is worthless, that being his present state, He said I will throw it all away, to gain Christ. We must give up selfish attention to the present.

If you will notice there is a word that used in verse 9 (Faith).

For God's way of making us right with Himself depends on faith.

Faith is an action word, Faith is about moving forward! We can not live in our past, we can remember our past for faith builders. But God about moving us to where He wants us to be.

I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,

I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Paul make it very clear here that He has not reach perfection but that he is moving forward to that perfection.

He said one thing I am doing forgetting the past and looking forward to the future.

Some of our past is not good, but some of our past is good, but to advance in the race that is set before us we must un-shackle the past and step out of the present.

Southpointe Idabel we can not just say it is good enough or it OK, we must push in faith to perfection.

Perfection is the act of making something perfect.

We must live in that full dimension.

Abraham draw from the resources of an great past and conformed to a lifestyle of righteousness through faith.

In a vision Abraham see 2000 years ahead, and he rejoiced that he saw the day of Christ. And because this he was put on the list of the forward-living heroes of faith. In the book of Hebrews 11.

Daniel rejected a remorseful state over past glory and established himself with unbending integrity and built his future on a stone, cut out of the mountain without hands.

Our God leads forward to the future and He has His people following step by step in His tracks.

We must push forward and don’t live in yesterday blessings, but live in today anointing.

By spiritual inspiration, he pulled himself from this horrible pit of the past and present to heights where he could see the mountain of the Lord’s house, and the arm of the Lord.