Daily Devotional #1,439

We have a wonderful church campus. It has a Chapel, two small houses, a double garage, four outbuildings and a huge barn and lots of beautiful space. When we moved in some years ago, we figured we’d never run out of storage space. We couldn’t have been more wrong! We have stuff everywhere! And we have almost run out of storage space, and it is hard for us to find the stuff that is really important for our work as a church now. So, we are going to get a dumpster and have warned people to get anything they want off campus. There is some stuff that we will hold onto from the past. But a lot of it is just personal stuff that we had no other place to leave. We are going to start this weekend and I’ve got stuff I have to get back to my house too! I got to thinking about that and a passage came to mind. The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in a city called Philippi and he told them that he was learning to forget the past and look forward to what lies ahead. He described our life in Christ as a race that he and we are running. And that we are running for a heavenly prize that God has for us. There are lots of things that are worth carrying into our futures, but we need to not hold on tightly to yesterday…but to look to the dynamic future that God has for us. As we said in church yesterday…There’s a great big, beautiful tomorrow…and God is calling us to get rid of anything that will slow us down and keep us from completing that race that we entered when we accepted this Jesus of the Bible as our Lord and Savior. So, keep only what you really need and join God as he leads us into his awesome future!

Here’s our Bible verse for today…

Philippians 3:13-14 NLT 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, (14) I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Remember I’m praying for you…
With love, Pastor Joe