One Thing You Must Do!
"13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:13-14).
In the recent times, I have been doing only one thing spiritually and I believe that is the only one thing that we all must learn to do in order to do well to reach for the eternal heavenly prize that Jesus has set before us and have thus called us to receive it by winning the prize for the spiritual race we run on earth.
The devil has tried his best to bring in to my mind some of the mean spirited brethren and sisters who have behaved very meanly towards me for no reason of mine. To one person I have been a long time childhood friend and the other person is some one whom God delivered through me. The devil tried to bring those old incidents and also a hearsay speech of them in to my mind again and again to make me think something bad against them and therefore develop a grudge towards them in my hidden heart.
One thing I learned in my twenties when God touched me in my desperate hopeless times of physical infirmity was to forgive people no matter what they have done, so that I may not try to justify my position and hold on to my ill feelings towards them and their behaviour. During that time of my life, God showed all the unforgiveness that have been stored in my heart for years in the past and told me to let it go by His strength and help. That was the day I learned real spirituality, which is to forgive others as God has forgiven me unconditionally (Col 3:13). That day God reminded me that all the misery I have faced in my life was because of unforgiveness and that if I do not choose to forgive people of their misdeed against me, God also will not forgive my ongoing sins without which demonic torturers will begin to control and afflict me (Matt 18:34-35).
Compared to the forgiveness we have received unconditionally as a gift from God, the number of people whom we forgive is nothing in comparision. It is like God forgiving us a million dollar debt and expecting us to forgive others some few dollars.
So I again and again did not want to retain the bad behaviour of the people whom the devil was bringing to my mind. Immediately I thanked the Holy Spirit for showing me the tricks of the devil and chose to bless them loudly from my heart (Matt 5:44-45). Ever since I chose to forgive people of all their tresspasses against me, I have learned how blessed I can become in God as His child.
We need to forget all things that are behind us inorder to really run for the prize that is ahead of us. If we can't forgive people, then we cannot run competetively against our own self. The devil will get a foothold in our lives easily through unforgiveness and will start to make our lives miserable day after day (Eph 4:26-27). We train our body to run the spiritual race by denying itself the right to defend for itself and instead take up the cross of forgetting people's tresspasses by forgiving them and letting God work on behalf of us to justify us and to take vengeance in His own way and time.
Once we forgive others, we should not let the enemy try to harbor ill feelings in our heart against people whom we have already forgiven and thus make us not to forget it. If we do not forgive people from our heart unconditionally by the Lord's strength, we will not forget people of their tresspasses which will again bring us in to the bondage of unforgiveness and grudge towards them. Thus bless those who curse you is the law we should apply by the Lord's help to over come this subtle work of our enemy Satan and his demons.
When we forget others mistake, God will be pleased to forget our mistakes too. Then we should choose to love the people whom we have forgiven by being filled with the love of God in our heart, then we are moving in to a spiritual zone of God's perfect favour which is inaccesible to a believer who does not do these things (Matt 5:46-48; Rom 5:5; Col 3:14). Every time we choose to love unworthy people who does not deserve our love, remember it God who is making us to do such a thing by His power. By loving our enemies unconditionally, God will be glorified through our lives on earth and He will glorify us in the life to come with great honor, authority and power. So if ever we try to do one thing in this life before we die, may this abundant life of forgiveness and love be the one thing that we choose to do and thus win the eternal prize with great joy for running the race by God's strength.
This metaphor of a race is spoken by Apostle Paul to emphasize that all the believers in Jesus Christ have got qualified for this spiritual race in which he included himself. In the times when Paul the apostle wrote this to believers, the greek citizens had the great world champion contest of ancient Olympia games where they will first get qualified to attend the event as citizens of greece. Once they get qualified, then they will start to practice for the prize that once a year people long for to receive. So a unbeliever cannot run this and take part in this spiritual prize contest that every believer runs. But we as the citizens of the heavely kingdom of God have been qualified to run the race against our fleshly desires.
Remember saints, if we do not choose to run the race now in forgiveness and love, we will never be able to win the race then.
DON'T LET YOUR PAST MAKE YOUR FUTURE POOR, INSTEAD FORGET YOUR PAST TO ENJOY YOUR PRESENT TIME ABUNDANTLY AND YOUR FUTURE RICHES ETERNALLY.
"Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life." — George MacDonald
