Bethany Bullet - Week of March 13, 2016

Just Another 40 Days: Until the Forever Days

Text: Philippians 3:10-15

Watch this YouTube Clip of one of the many “The Settlers” commercials currently running on television.

Click HERE to see one of these, if you are unable to open the link then copy/paste this into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iunxIzxpWjs 

None of us can imagine being a “settler” in our modern world of convenience right!  So why is it that probably all of us can admit that at times we’ve been willing to be spiritual settlers? 

Sometimes we settle for confidence in self and other times with comfort in sin.

St. Paul in writing to the Philippians (3:4-19) so beautifully declares that our confidence cannot rest on ourselves, neither our paternity nor our pedigree; rather it must rest on Christ. “I could not make myself acceptable to God by obeying the Law of Moses.  God’s acceptance is a gift given on account of Christ, for God has accepted me through faith in Jesus.”  (Philippians 8b-9)

St. Paul also pointedly reminds us that by nature we are inclined to become comfortable with sin and that ought not be.  “…many I tell you live as enemies of the cross of Christ…their god their stomach, their glory is their shame, the mind on earthly things.” (Philippians 18-19)

St. Paul shows in these verses that the key to not settling in ones confidence in self nor in becoming comfortable with sin is striving to not be a spiritual settler:  “I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me…this is what I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward t those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 12, 13b-14)

-Pastor Kevin Kritzer