Unstuck: Keep Your Focus
January 22, 2017
Dr. Tom Pace
Philippians 3:7-16

We are in the middle of a series called “Unstuck” and I want to give you sort of an overview. The very first week we talked about how God calls us to just get up and get moving. So the Scripture said, “The man who was paralyzed beside the pool of Bethsaida, Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your pallet and walk!” Just get moving.
Last week we talked about vision and destination. So what is your calling? What is it that God’s calling you to do?
This week we’re digging still a little deeper so each week we’re trying to get more foundational. This week we’re talking about not what God calls you to do, what your mission or calling is, but who God calls you to be. What God is working in your life to help you become.
We’re not talking about achievement or accomplishment today we want to talk about character. So our Scripture is from Philippians, it is a very important passage for United Methodists. John Wesley really took hold of this concept of going on to perfection. We’re going to read together only one part of that Scripture. So listen as the Scripture is read this morning.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christand be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ,the righteousness from God based on faith.I want to know Christand the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.Beloved,I do not consider that I have made it my own;but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenlycall of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you.Only let us hold fast to what we have attained. (Philippians 3:7-16 NRSV)
Join me in prayer, O God, open us up, open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel and then O God, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
When I was in high school our youth director did this little activity with our youth group where we decorated the youth area of the church like the catacombs that the early Christians had to live in when they were being persecuted, when being a Christian carried with it a sentence of death. It was kind of goofy and fun, and at the end of it he asked a question. He said, “If being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
It’s a question I’ve heard many times before and I suspect you have also. It’s a good question and it’s about fruitfulness. Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruit.” So are you producing fruit for God? I like to think about it this way. If you had to apply for a job as a part of the Kingdom of God, would your resume be sufficient? Would there be enough on there?
So Paul is talking about that but it’s interesting. He goes about it in a little different way. Now this is what just precedes the Scripture you read a minute ago and I want you to listen. “If anyone has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. As to the law a Pharisee. As to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.” It’s as if he’s saying, “If I’m applying for a job as a good religious person I would get the job. I have all of the qualifications.”
But then Paul says, “But I regard everything as a loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ my Lord. I regard them as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him.”
I want to talk today about the difference between achieving and becoming, between accomplishing and growing. I shared with you some months ago about a book by David Brooks called The Road to Character. In there he talks about the difference between resume virtues and eulogy virtues. I like the distinction. Resume verities are the skills, the qualifications you bring to the world, to the marketplace. It’s as if you say, “Here’s what I can do. Here’s the difference I can make in the world.” Eulogy virtues are about your character, about who you are.
My son-in-law’s father, Lawrence Jones, died in a very tragic accident just over a week ago in Atlanta, Georgia. A really good, gentle, kind person. Really a tragedy. My son-in-law, Larry, went to the memorial service and gave the eulogy there and I was so proud of what he wrote. And I want to share with you just a little piece of it because it makes the kind of distinction that I’m trying to make here.
He said, “For some of us Lawrence Jones wasn’t Lawrence Jones. He was Dad, he was Grandpa. To us he wasn’t an offensive tackle for Villanova but the man who would pat us on the back after a loss and tell us that losing builds character. He wasn’t a regional sales manager but the man who would stand in the kitchen in his scrubs and take pancake orders. To us he wasn’t a Baltimore native but the man who taught us that picking crabs was a family event. To us he wasn’t just a reliable tennis partner but a man who enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table playing games with grandkids. To us he was a man we all admired, respected and loved.”
That’s not exactly the same distinction, but I want you to be able to see the difference between saying, “Here’s what’s on my resume. Here’s what I have accomplished” and “Here’s who I am. Here’s the person that I’m intended to be.”
Paul goes on to talk about how that transformation of character comes. He says, “In order that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”
You might be tempted to think that what he’s saying is that it really doesn’t matter as long as you accept Jesus. “If you just accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of your life then everything else is rubbish, it just doesn’t matter.” And that’s a little piece of what he’s saying, but only the start.
In theology we talk about a distinction between justification and sanctification. Justification says, “You’ve been given the righteousness of Christ. You are declared righteous before God because of what Christ has done for you. You are forgiven of your sins and you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. God looks at you and says, ‘He is accepted and righteous just as he is.’”
But that’s not the end of the salvation story. Salvation includes sanctification as well. And what sanctification says is that once you come to accept Christ and you live in Christ and Christ lives in you, by the power of the Holy Spirit you are changed. And you become a new person. The Holy Spirit works within you over and over again to transform you to make you more like Christ himself. That’s this power of sanctification, this movement that God does within us. That is, us becoming more like Jesus.
It may be that you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, look, Pastor, I can’t be like Jesus. That’s just too much. I mean, Jesus is Jesus.” Well, I want to give you just a bit of a grace in that regard. Because here’s the deal. Richard Foster has written a book that has meant a lot to me. It’s a fairly old book. It’s called A Celebration of Discipline and it became this huge best seller in churches all over that studied it. That didn’t get me as much as the book he wrote called Streams of Living Water. And in that book he looked at Jesus and he traced back all of these saints of the church, way back into ancient history. What he shows is that each one of them has a little piece of who Jesus was, so that it might be for example all of those who were such a part of prayer and contemplation. And who were the monks who went away on the side of the hills and prayed and prayed and prayed, and how they were much like Jesus who went aside to pray. And those who were all about social justice who stood up for the poor and the powerless, and how they were very much like Jesus who turned over the tables in the temple. You see, there’s this ongoing sense where he says, “The whole body of Christ which is all of us - we can contain the character of Christ.”
I don’t want to discount the idea that in all areas of our life we need to be changing and becoming more like Christ. But God made each one of us in a unique way, and each one of us has a part to play in the body of Christ.
In fact, Paul says “the fruit of the Spirit – the Holy Spirit at work within us, are love, peace, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, self-control.” Those are elements of character, and God works within us to get us to that place.
The word character comes from a Greek word meaning “to etch.” And the picture is how can we have the character of Christ etch itself into each one of our lives so that we become more and more like him. The process of sanctification is developing those eulogy values. I like to call them “Jesus virtues.” What are the Jesus virtues that you want to claim in your life?
The second thing I want us to see in this passage is from this phrase, this verse: “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do.” I love it when he just says, “This is the thing. This is the one thing that matters.” I long to be able to understand and have that really work for me. To say, “This is the one thing that I want to be about.”
What Paul is saying is that if we claim that one thing, the other things will fall into place. That one thing for him is knowing Christ and being known by Christ, to join our lives with Christ so that we’re transformed. And if that will become first for us then all the other things will fall into place.
Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well. All the other things will be in their proper place.” This week as I was reflecting on this Scripture I wrote my weekly prayer in my email. And I was remembering my ordination maybe 150 years ago when the Bishop laid hands on me. The Bishop who ordained me was a man named Leroy Hodapp, and it was in the Southern Illinois Conference. He asked me the traditional questions that have been asked of Methodist preachers since the days of John Wesley. And some of those questions were about my calling as a pastor. “Will you visit from house to house? Will you diligently teach the children?” Those are the kinds of questions that are about our calling. “Have you studied the doctrines of the Methodist church and will you preach and maintain them? Will you pursue this calling as a pastor?”
But those are secondary questions to the main questions. The primary questions are “Have you faith in Christ? Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?” See, it gets harder. “Are you earnestly striving after it?”
Bishop Hodapp helped me when I was going to say “Hey, man, nobody’s perfect! Come on!” He said, “Are you going on to perfection? If you’re not going on to perfection where are you going on to? Where are you headed? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this lifetime, and if not, what are your expectations? To just be okay, to be good enough? Are you earnestly striving to become the person God made you to be?” That’s the singular focus.
My friend Clayton Oliphint, he’s the pastor at First United Methodist Church of Richardson, and his sister, Mary Brooke Casad wrote three books that came out at the same time. One of them is called The Road to Amazing, and in there he makes an obvious interesting point. The word priority first shows up in the 1200s, the thirteenth century. The first time it shows up in the plural is in the 1800s. He goes on to say that the word priorities – you know where you say “What are your priorities?” – He said that’s nonsensical. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t have multiple priorities, because the word prior means the first thing. You can only have one “first things.” If you have multiple first things then they aren’t first. There’s only one thing that’s the first thing.
What is the one thing you do that puts everything else – all the good things and the bad things all the other pieces of your life into their proper place? He says, “The one thing I do is striving to know Christ and be transformed by his righteousness, to live into the righteousness he’s given me.” That’s what he says. That’s the one thing.
And we have all these other distractions that turn us away from there. Distractions are the largest cause of accidents, the largest decrease in productivity in the workplace. YouTube and Facebook. Distractions. Things that turn you away. What we’re to do is glance at those distractions but continue to come back to focus on “the one thing I do,” to be more and more like the Christ who’s declared me righteous.
So the passage goes on, “Not that I have obtained this or already reached the goal but I press on to make it my own.” Then in verse 13 he says, “Straining forward to what lies ahead I press on to the goal for the prize.” What he’s saying is, “Look, I’m not there yet. But I’m going to keep making progress. Progress. Progress. I’m going to keep taking steps forward along the way.”
I read just a piece of a book on a website of a guy named Steve Kamb. He’s now doing quite well for himself because he created a website and a program called Nerd Fitness. It’s designed for video gamers. Rob Dulaney is shaking his head – do you do Nerd Fitness? Could you do Nerd Fitness? I thought you could probably. So Nerd Fitness is interesting but if you think about it, video gamers are not the most physically fit human beings there are. What he says is that the mentality of video gamers is perfect for physical fitness because it’s designed at levels. Every video game has levels. So you think to yourself “I’m going to just finish this one level and then I’m going to quit and go back to work on my sermon.” So you do it and you do it and you get to that level and you say, “Yea! I passed it… I’ve conquered it!” Then the dopamine floods into your mind and you think, “Yes! Maybe just a little more… I’m just going to get started on this level before I go back.” Because there’s this sense of satisfaction in continuing to make progress.
I want to invite you to think about progress you’d like to make in your character. What are the Jesus virtues, the eulogy virtues that you want to take hold of? I will tell you that one of them is that I want to live a more joyful life. I think that’s part of what God made me to be. Sometimes I chase those distractions instead of taking hold of the person I think God intended me to be. I don’t know, you may have another one. Patience maybe. Are you more patient than you were a year ago? How can you be more patient than you are now, a year from now? What is the eulogy virtue that you want to take hold of?
He goes on: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” The heavenly call – the upward call. I want to keep responding to God’s call upward in my character, not downward. But upward in my character, to take hold of the upward things and live those.
Then he says, “Only let us hold fast to that which we have attained.” Now let me say that this is translated this way here but I don’t think it’s the most accurate or effective translation. It really could be translated as “Only let us take hold of that which we have already attained.” Or the New International Version said, “Only let us live up to that which we have already attained.” See, here’s what we’re saying. Christ has declared you righteous. Now live that. Be that one. Strive to be the one that God has declared righteous.
Fred Craddock is perhaps one of the greatest preachers I’ve ever heard. He passed away two years ago and was sort of a quiet story telling kind of guy. He could really spin a yarn, I’ll tell you that. He tells a story that when he and his wife were young they slipped away into the hills of Tennessee for a vacation, just the two of them. They went into a little café in a small town there in Tennessee and sat down to have lunch.
A man saw them come in and his eyes followed them along as they sat down and he immediately got up from his table and walked over to talk to them. He said, “Hey, you’re not from around here. What brings you to our little town?” He was an elderly man. Craddock said, “Well, my wife and I are on vacation and we just wanted to have some time for ourselves.” (Hint…hint!)
The fellow said, “Oh, well, what do you do for a living?” He was obviously not taking the hint. Craddock said, “Well, I’m a preacher…” And the other man said, “Oh, you’re a preacher? I have a story to tell you.” Then he sits down in the booth with them.
They’re thinking, “Oh, man!” The fellow said, “I was born in this little town in a shack just outside of the city limits. And my mother, when I was born, was not married. At that time there was a great shame and embarrassment being born like that. I didn’t know who my father was and I was just ashamed.” He said, “I went through my childhood with kids calling me names and hearing people whisper about me. I had trouble looking people in the eye.”
Then he went on. “Then one day a preacher came to town with a tent revival. It was the only entertainment in the little town, so I decided I’d go to the tent revival. I was 12 years old. I went to that revival and every day I’d listen to him preach and I’d listen to the people sing and I’d see all the energy and the jumpin’ up and down. It was great fun. I listened to every word he said. “And at the very last night when I turned to leave I felt this hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the preacher and he said to me, ‘Who are you, boy? You’ve been here every night. Who’s your family? Who’s your daddy?’” “A sick feeling came through my stomach and I couldn’t help but think, ‘Here we go again.’”
Then the preacher said, “Wait a minute, I see it – I don’t know how I missed it before now! You’re Jesus’ brother. Your father is the God Almighty, God most high. You have an incredible inheritance. You are royalty, son! What a great inheritance you have. Go and take hold of that.” The man then said, “I just wanted to thank you because a preacher changed my life forever. And if you’re a preacher I just wanted to say ‘thank you.’” Then he got up and walked way.
Craddock and his wife were just talking about what an interesting experience that had been when the waitress came back over. She said, “Do you know who you were talking to?” They said, “No, he just came over and made himself at home here.” She said, “Well, he’s the local legend around these parts. He grew up right here in this town and he was elected for two terms as the governor of Tennessee. His name is Ben Hooper.”
What a great picture of what God says to us. It’s not that we’re going to become the governor of Tennessee. That doesn’t matter, but that you have been given this inheritance, this righteousness that has been given to you as a gift. You don’t earn it or jump through any hoops for it. But once it’s given to you, then you press forward to live it. To become the person that Christ has already declared you to be. Let us live up to that which we have already attained.
Join me in prayer. Gracious God, we confess that too often we focus on those resume virtues and make them most significant in our lives. Forgive us, God, help us to understand and experience that you have declared us righteous in Christ and that we have an inheritance from you that is amazing. We pray that we would become the people that you created us to be, and that we would live up to that which we have already attained, and that we would become by the power of your Holy Spirit more and more like your son Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen.