A Heavenly Citizenship

Having a goal in mind

How many of you have goals in life? What goals do you have?

Now if you want to reach those goals what do you need to do in order to attain them?

First, you need to recognize that you are currently not where you need to be in order to attain that goal. You with your current talents and abilities you will not be able to accomplish what you want to reach.

Second, you need to be able to lose bad habits, gain new ones, and not look back. If you keep thinking about how bad you used to be and you allow your past ability to affect your future you will never have the confidence to reach your goal.

Third, that desire needs to drive you to goal. If you don’t have the desire it doesn’t matter what it is you will never reach it if you don’t desire it.

To be Christian means that you:

Know that you are not perfect.

Paul says that he has not taken hold of it”. That means that he has not been able to perfectly to what he needs to do. He recognizes that he has a long way to go in order to get to where he wants to be and where he needs to be.

We should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought but rather we should consider that we do have the opportunity to reach the goal but we have a long way to go.

Have any of you ever tried to do something before you were ready to do it? I do this all the time, I always get ahead of myself because I can be too impatient to do it the right way. This happens all the time when I try to fix something on one of our cars. I will start working on something and then recognize that I don’t know what I am doing yet and have to watch a YouTube video or read directions and do all this other stuff because I haven’t prepared myself yet.

One day you will recognize this when you get out of your parents house and you see all of the things you need to worry about when you are an adult.

In fact, lets try and make a list, what do you think are things you are required to know when you are an adult?

And oftentimes you have teenagers who say “I can take care of myself” and don’t recognize all of these things you have to worry about!

Looks towards the future rather than have guilt about the past.

But the other thing can do is get down on ourselves. We recognize that we are imperfect to a fault. Rather than see any good in us we see ourselves as horrible and having not skills or abilities. We can be crippled by fear of failure and not allow ourselves to move forward. We must see ourselves as God see’s us. Because He made us in His image and He made us with a purpose. We have talked about this several times, but God will carry us through our journey until we meet Him in heaven. And if He is doing that for us then we don’t have to worry that we will be unsuccessful.

Or we can have a sin or a failure that makes us feel guilty and makes us feel like we are no good and we just can’t get past this failure in yourself. We feel like we are trapped and we can never get out, but the Lord has enough strength if we are willing to repent and let others help us in our struggle.

In sports there is thing called the Yips. Have you ever heard of that? It is whenever you lose your confidence to such a degree that you can’t even perform the basic tasks necessary. For example in baseball, a catcher has the job of throwing the ball to the pitcher after ever pitch. Well if a catcher gets the yips he can lose the ability to throw the ball to the catcher and will throw it over his head or not far enough and he can’t get it right. Because he is thinking about it too much, he is in his own head and he has allowed the fear of failure to overtake his mind. This can also happen in basketball with something as simple as a layup. A layup, the easier shot to take, you can get the yips and be unable to make a simple basket.

Sometimes we can have the spiritual yips, we can lose the ability to recognize God has given us the confidence to succeed and we just always focus on our failures. But Paul tells us what we are to focus on instead.

Recognize the prize that we desire to attain in Christ.

But what Paul tells them to do is focus ahead on the prize. See, if you have the yips you have to stop thinking about throwing the ball or making the layup. You have to remember the bigger pitcher and the game that you are playing. You have to remember the goal rather than focus on the individual steps. Because we perform best based on muscle memory.

That’s why Paul tells us to pay attention of those who live according to this example. Because when you see others doing it then you learn from that to do it yourself. Because we imitate those we look up to. Whether that be your parents or a sibling, or a close friend.

Keep your Eyes peeled

Braden, you drive now. So let me ask you. When you drive do you just keep your eyes on the lines in front of you? What else do you look at? You look at the cars to the front of you, to the side, and behind you. You look at street signs, at traffic lights, at cars or people coming from crosswalks or from other streets. You keep an eye on anything that could be on the road. You have a lot of things to pay attention to.

Paul tells us to pay attention to those who live the correct way. But He also tells them to be careful of those whose lives will end in destruction. Who are the people that Paul talks about whose lives end in destruction? He is specifically talking about a group called “Judaizers”. They are people who called themselves believers but abused the liberty they had in Christ. They used the grace that God gives us as an excuse to live their life however they wanted and enjoying whatever desired they felt was right at the moment. He talks about them just enjoying food but in a way that what they are going to eat is what is central to their lives. They are always looking to the next meal and to the next thing to enjoy. It is all about satisfying their needs. They find joy in shame and they are focused on earthly things.

They are devoted to self-indulgence, always looking to please their physical desires.

They have an inverted view of morality. The things they should be praising they despise and the things that they should be ashamed of they glorify.

They focus on earthly rewards. Their decisions are centered on the here and now and what they can attain.

But Paul tells them they are of a heavenly citizenship. That what should comprise their life is a desire to do things to God’s glory.

I grew up living in New Jersey, specifically South Jersey. And in South Jersey there is a town called Atlantic City. Who has heard of Atlantic City? Well Atlantic City has been known for one thing for a long time…casinos. Have any of you ever been in a casino? Well a casino smells like cigarettes all the time, there is alcohol everywhere, there are slots, and card tables, and roulette tables everywhere. Casinos never have clocks and they don’t have windows. Because they don’t want you to think about how long you have been in there. And all drinks are free. Because they know the more you drink the less good at the games you will be and the worse judgment you will have. Now the other things about Atlantic City is that they have a really cool boardwalk on the beach, in fact it is the longest boardwalk in the United States. They have rides, candy stores, arcade games, a nice beach, and lots of other cool things. But in order to get to the boardwalk you have to walk through the casinos. They made it that way so that you are forced to consider gambling before you get to the beach. When my family walked through there we never stopped at any of those things, because that wasn’t our goal. Our goal was to get to the beach, our goal was to enjoy all the incredible things that awaited us at the end of our journey.

But if you find yourself distracted by one thing you could find yourself in there for a long time and forgetting the goal that you had and having a new goal. Whether it be to win one more round, or to get your money back, or to make so much money. You can lose track of what you came in there for. Our life here on earth is like the casino, it isn’t the goal, it is just the road we travel to get there. What we desire is on the other side.