You can trap a bear simply by putting something of interest in a box where the opening is the size of the bear’s paw.  Once it grabs the item, the bear’s fist no longer will fit through the opening and the large animal is now captive.  Paul writes of his tendency to do the same:

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.”  Philippians 3:7-9, The Message

Don’t you just love his graphic description?  Paul is basically saying he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but instead of a relishing the sweets, he realized it was nothing more than dog dung.  Why?  Because it kept him from the one thing he wanted more than anything else: to embrace Christ and be embraced by him. 

My three-year-old gives the best hugs.  He’ll start fifty yards away, yell out, “big hug!” then come bolting in my direction.  I drop everything as he comes barreling towards me and prepare for his embrace.  Within seconds, he nearly knocks me over as his body quickly gets enveloped in mine.  I savor those hugs.  They are so worth dropping everything for.

If that is what a hug from my little beast is like, can you imagine what it’d be like to be embraced by Christ?  Tears trickle down my cheeks at the mere thought.   I think I’ll drop some dog dung in preparation.  How about you?

The past is in the past. I’ve often struggled with this line of thinking because, personally, I struggle with letting things go. So the passage of scripture that we are looking at this week stumps me. Paul writes the following:

“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead…. Philippians 3:13”

I believe two things happen when we look back (in the past), we either marvel at our accomplishments, or we dwell on the mistakes. Neither is good because the result is often that we become stuck in the past. We fear moving forward because of the mistakes we’ve made in the past, or we fear moving forward because we might not achieve the success we did in the past.

After reading some commentaries on this subject and meditating on these scriptures I believe what Paul is saying is that we are not to focus so much on the past that we miss what God has in store for the future. It’s important to remember and reflect—especially on the great mercy and grace God has shown to us. But the key is to not become so focused on the past that we get stuck there.

Here’s a silly illustration. Picture in your mind that you are driving your car. You are driving down the street in your town going 40ish miles per hour, but instead of looking out the window ahead of you, you are looking in the rearview mirror for the whole drive? Yikes! Remind me not to drive when you are on the road….. Seriously, would any mature driver do such a thing? No way! We would miss what was going on ahead of us. And missing what’s happening ahead could be disastrous.

Friends, I believe Paul has some very important advice in this scripture. He does not want us to be so self-focused that we miss what God is doing around us. Isn’t that what being stuck in the past is really about—selfishness? When our focus is on ourselves it is off of God. Moving forward means focusing on God and trusting that He holds our future.

I find great comfort in knowing and claiming that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).” He is the God that reached into my past and gently moved me into the present. And He is the same God that will walk with me into the future and show me the way.

It’s time to live unstuck.