 But tonight we're in chapter three. We're gonna look at verses 12 through 16 here in the book of Philippians. So let's begin reading at verse 12, and I'll read to verse 16 and we'll get into our study. Paul writes, not that I have already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, for getting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let us as many as are mature have this mind. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind. Now, Paul has been writing, as you may remember, Paul has been writing and has stated that he had a desire to know Jesus and the power of the resurrection. And he had said it's his greatest desire to be found in him. So as we enter into this section of his letter, he continues pouring his heart out to the Philippians. Now, he's already pointed out to them as you know that he had left his previous religious life behind. The things that at one time could have been regarded as advantages have been discarded. In light of this, they could possibly think that Paul was teaching that he had already attained. They could be thinking that perhaps he's saying he has already reached maturity or perfection. And so that's why he's writing and saying not that I have already attained or am already perfected. The goal of everything is to know the Lord Jesus Christ. The goal of everything is to know him and be found in him. And he has already stated not having his own righteousness. So he's saying I have not fully arrived to the place of perfection because that place of perfection is still yet in the distant future. When you read the writings of Paul, you need to remember something. He never claimed to have received such a state nor does he intimate anywhere that such a state is ever reached on earth. You see, there are those who teach something called sinless perfectionism. They teach that you can attain perfection even here while still on the face of the earth. If you were to be in an orthodox, Wesleyan denomination at your ordination, you would make a statement as part of the ordination ceremony that you believe that you could reach a sinless state of perfection even here on earth. That's still part of the Wesleyan ordination process because there are those who believe in the doctrine of sinless perfection. Paul never claimed to have received such a state. He doesn't intimate anywhere in scripture that such a state is ever reached on earth. Now, we need to know that first, in Jesus we do have something called righteousness. It's referred to in scripture as imputed. It's given to us because it's not something we possess on our own. It's called imputed righteousness. It's given to us. And it's given to us when we place our faith in him. You see this in the book of Romans. If you take notes, it's found in chapter four in Romans verses 20 through 24, speaking of Abraham. And there it says that Abraham did not waiver at the promise of God through unbelief but was strengthened in faith giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. And therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now, it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Righteousness is imputed to you. It's something that you don't have on your own. There is none righteous, no not one. And so what we need is something given to us that we don't already have. And so when you give your heart to Christ through faith, he gives to you that which you didn't have. He gives to you his righteousness. When Paul was writing in second Corinthians chapter five, verse 21, he said, he has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. And so when you gave your heart to Jesus Christ, you were given his righteousness. So you have righteousness, but what has not yet been attained is perfection. And that perfection isn't going to be attained until we are physically with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, he has spoken concerning the attaining of the resurrection from the dead. One of the things that we'd need to remember is that the prize is normally awarded at the end of the race. And so perfection, the state of perfection, is going to be something that we have when we are with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, John, in first John chapter three, verse two, when John was writing, John said, beloved, now are we the sons of God and it doesn't yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. When the Lord comes for us, we will be placed into that state of maturity or perfection. In 1 Corinthians 13, 12, it says, now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And so that state of perfection comes when you're with the Lord. And that's why he says that he has not yet, in verse 12, already attained or am already perfected. So what do you do? Well, he says, I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. My desire, he's saying, is to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I have chosen to do something. I've chosen to press on. What we're looking at is this one thing I do. What is this one thing I press on? Now when he says I press on, that word press means it's a picture of somebody who's running in a race who is pressing or swiftly reaching the goal. His desire is to reach the goal. Because we haven't arrived at the goal, we pursue it, we pursue it with all diligence. Psalm 27.4 says it like this, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. Listen, if you wanna see the Lord move in your life, you need to get rid of the things that distract you. You just have to. If you're running with leg weights, you're not gonna win the race. Years ago when I used to jog, I bought some leg weights that you put around your ankles and you try to run with them. They are a great distraction. And I guarantee you, you don't run that fast with them. I don't run that fast now, but I probably could outrun myself then wearing those leg weights. Those weights were heavy. And when you put those leg weights on and you run, it's in order to strengthen you. But you don't go into the race wearing those weights. You don't wanna have any weights, extra weights. Look at the marathoners. I know we have people in this church who are endurance athletes. I know that. I don't understand you, but I know you. I know you are here. My record for laying on the couch is really what I'm going for. But there are some who like to get on that bike and ride for miles. I was, there's some super athlete who runs, he can run for hours at a time. Several, several marathons in a row. He runs, he's run 13 hours in a row. Just runs and for mile after mile, a super athlete, he loves to do that. He's in great condition. He has one goal and that's to complete the task in front of him. If you're gonna be superior, if you're gonna be the best that you can possibly be, you need to get rid of all the distractions that keep you from doing that. You wanna be a good husband? Get rid of the distractions. You wanna be a good wife? Get rid of the distractions. You wanna be a good Christian? Get rid of the distractions. Get rid of the things that are weighing you down. Get rid of the things that hold you back. Let them go, they're not worth it anyway. And Paul was making it very clear. He has one goal and that is to be with the Lord. Even as the psalmist said, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. My desire is to dwell with the Lord and behold his beauty. And so that which keeps me from doing that must be eliminated. It has to be. So he's saying in spite of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we need to learn to keep our eyes on the prize, our eyes on eternity. Psalm 84 verse two says, my soul longs even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. That's my desire to love God, to see him, to behold his beauty, to have fellowship with him. That's my desire. That's the desire of every believer. And so what we desire to do is to press on. He says that we may hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. So he knows that the Christian life is a journey, a lifetime and it can be difficult. So what does he do while he presses on? Because he knows that what is waiting for him is worth it. What's waiting for him is worth anything that he has to yield up here. There's nothing that surpasses the beauty of knowing the Lord. We know that old song, it's an old hymn, Amazing Grace. One of the lines says, through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. Just grace that brought me safe thus far. Grace will lead me home. There's that one desire. There's that pressing. There's that straining. There's that discipline. There's that longing that he's speaking about here. He says that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has noticed also laid hold of me. Jesus laid hold of him on the road to Damascus. There's the apostle Paul at that time called Saul. Breathing out threatenings concerning followers of Jesus Christ. He hated Christians. It wasn't just a matter of just a disdain or just a dislike that some of us encounter with people who aren't believers, they don't like you, they blow you off, they might tease you a little bit, but they really don't care that much about you. No, he wasn't that way at all. Paul hated you. Paul had gotten permission. He had gotten letters that enabled him to go and actually hunt Christians. And he did that with vigor. He did that with joy. He wanted to take them. And when he found them, he would put them in chains, have them brought back, tried his heretics, and would approve of their death. He wanted Christians to be wiped out, and he obtained letters to go into Damascus, Syria in order to seek and find those believers who were there. While on the road to Damascus, we all know that very famous story. Instead of him arresting believers, the Lord Jesus Christ arrested him. And when the Lord took him down and broke that man, this man who was a man who breathed out threatenings with hatred towards believers and who was fighting against Jesus, even as Jesus said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? You remember the story? Who are you, Lord? I'm not, in other words, I'm not persecuting anyone. Jesus says, when you are persecuting one of these who believe in me, you are persecuting me. You are fighting against the Lord. You're moving against him. And so Saul was arrested by Jesus Christ, humbled by the Lord, changed his name even. We all know his name, Saul. Saul of Tarsus. Saul means great one. But he became Paul, which means little one. He was changed. He was changed from one who was great in the eyes of man and religion to one who was small in his own sight because he understood humility because he'd been broken. And so here's this man who has one desire and that is the layhold of that for which Christ Jesus laid hold of him. Even as Jesus fully apprehended him, he wanted to fully lay hold of Jesus as his own. I can't imagine not wanting to have all of the Lord that you can have. It's like getting married and having a part-time marriage. Just like, you know, I don't mind if I see her once in a while. My wife can tell you that that's not the kind of husband I am. Maybe I'm a little too absorbing to be honest with you. But I'm the kind of husband who says, where are you going and when you're coming back? You know, well, I'm just going into the other room. How long are you gonna be there? Somebody needs to change the channel on this TV set. I got married because I wanted to be with that woman. That's why I got married because I loved her and I love her. And I wanna always be with her. So I pursue her. I strain in our relationship to be a good husband. I wanna be the kind of person she wants to be around. It just makes sense to me. And if I have that relationship with my wife, which is really only here on earth, how much more so should I strain to have a relationship in the sense of pressing on with the Lord Jesus Christ? How much more should that operate in my life to be that impetus, that center of my being, that reality, that one thing, that desire to know him and to be with him. Well, that's what Paul is saying. I desire to know him. I wanna be with him. Psalm 17, verse 15 says, as for me, I will see your face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake in your likeness. And so his desire is to be with the Lord. Now notice verse 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, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So I don't count myself to have apprehended. I am not perfected. The Lord is still working on me. I haven't come to complete maturity. I am not yet what I shall one day be. And so with humility, the great apostle clearly confesses that he's still being worked on. So with that in mind, he makes it clear that his greatest desire is to reach out to what God has for him. Again, that singleness of vision. Loving God, pursuing him reveals a faith that is more than simply what we call said faith or head faith. It's a heart faith. It's a desire to seek him above all things. It's a desire. It's a longing, even as Osama says, as the deer panteth for the water, so my heart longs for thee in Psalm 42.1. My desire is to be with you. That's my great desire. We have to make a choice. Either we gather with the Lord Jesus Christ by pursuing him or we're gonna scatter abroad. There's no way that my life is gonna have a neutral effect on other people. Your life affects people like it or not. You can say, oh, I'm nobody's role model, but the fact is you are. The minute you name the name of Christ, the minute you say I'm a believer, you have become somebody's living letter and you are being read. Sometimes I think it's better not to say it at all than to say something like, oh, I love the Lord and then to go out and live like you don't even know him. As I share every once in a while, I shared recently about that. You can be doctrinally a Christian, but a practical atheist. You say you believe one thing, but you can do the exact opposite. Many do that, not just on occasion, but as a lifestyle. And yet they claim to know the Lord. Well, Paul would say, no, that's not the way to do it. That's not what God called us to. God said to press, to love him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and then to work that out by caring for others. It's not just all about me. Oh, I have a relationship with God. It's about me having a relationship with him and encouraging others and loving others. And so when I love God, I'm gonna love you. So if you have a love for God, you can love other people. Years ago, I had a friend of mine, used to teach a Bible study that he attended prior to this church. As a matter of fact, as a Bible study, I used to do just up the road here off of Philadelphia, just past East End. If you go in that direction, I've said this before, if you go in that direction to the West of where we're at right now, you just go up a couple blocks or so and on the right side, just past East End, is a place that used to be called Lou Bay's Feed or something like that. And there's a, well, it's not a rock house, but it's a house that's made out of rock. It wasn't a rock house. And we used to rock there. We used to, it's a house that is overlaid with rocks and you can see that. I think it's still there. I haven't been buying it in so long. I used to live there. I used to live there before Marie and I got married. And I used to do a Bible study there on Tuesday nights, back in the early 70s. And so Charlie, this friend of mine was there and he would come to the Bible study and I'll never forget how Charlie had said to me on one occasion, you know, when you read the Bible and you say we're supposed to love God with all of our hearts more than anything else, he said, I would think about that. How can I love God more than I love my own children? He said, it's hard for me to envision that as a matter of fact, it felt unnatural for me to even contemplate loving God more than I love my kids. He said, and then I discovered something. I discovered that when I gave my heart to the Lord and loved him with all my heart, it gave me more love to give to my children, a better love to give to my children and more enduring love to give to my children. I had a real love to give to my children. He said, I didn't even understand that until I made the Lord that, which he's supposed to be. And that's basically what Paul is saying. You know, your Christian faith is a very practical faith. It's not a pie in the sky, buy and buy kind of thing. It's a very practical faith. I live with the intent and desire to go to heaven because that's my home, I'm just passing through. But at the same time, I want to do as much as I can for him while I'm here. So it's a very practical faith. You love God and you love your neighbor as yourself. So you press forward in the power of the Holy Spirit with one thing in mind. And so he says, it's my desire to reach that, reach for that which God has for me. In Luke chapter 13 in verse 24, Jesus said, strive to enter in at the straight gate. For many I say unto you will seek to enter in and shall not be able. Sometimes people get this attitude or this mentality that I believe in, and then I just kind of just float along. I have discovered that there's a discipline involved in pursuing the Lord. There is a discipline, there's a dying to self and there is a decision that I make daily to pursue him with all that's within me. It doesn't just flow naturally, it's easier for me to naturally sin than it is to die to those things. It's just easier because that's my nature. It's easier to sin. Somebody says something to me in the past. It was a lot easier just to get mad and say something back than it is to bite my tongue and to say, Lord Jesus, they don't understand. Help me to be gracious towards them. It's a lot easier to say, are you kidding? You're nuts. Get out of my face. It's a lot easier to do that. Even if they beat you up when you wake up, it's all cool, it's no problem. It's easier. It's easier to let the flesh take over than it is to just say, Lord, give me words and give me wisdom, give me ability. Help me to love them. Lord, you know this isn't all this. So you strive. There's a discipline. There's this dying to self. There's this one thing mentality that you have to have. In 1st Timothy 612, Paul said, fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. So you pursue the Lord with all of your heart. You strain with all of your strength because you desire to win the prize. Now, let me give you something in a side, something that might help you. This is something every one of you learned when you first got saved. They're basics, but they help. Just basic things. I'll say it very briefly. Perhaps some of you need to be refreshed on this. I do. If you wanna grow, if you wanna have a strong walk in the Lord, four basic things I'll give to you that can help you. One, make sure you read the word of God. Don't read it just devotionally, picking it up in speed reading, but read it in such a way as to meditate on the things that are being said. In other words, study it. Read entire books. Read it chapter by chapter. You might even go out and buy a personal study guide. You can get all the CDs on teachings. You can listen to the radio, but make sure that the word of God is centered in your life. Psalm 119, verses nine through 11 says, how can a young man keep his way pure? And then the answer is given, by living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands. I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. So one, read the word. Two, spend time in prayer, because as you're reading the word of God, God is speaking to you. When you're praying, you're speaking to him. And I'm not talking about these quick prayers where you're at dinner and you say, in Jesus' name, bless this mess, amen. I'm saying, make sure that you spend time talking to the Lord. God, I don't understand what's going on right now. These are the things that I see. These are the things I'm confused about. Could you give me some direction on this somehow? Would you help me at Lord? That's how I speak to the Lord. I speak like that. I don't come in with flowery speech. I thank God that I learned to pray under a Calvary Chapel pastor. Not one of these fellows who have to say, these and thou's, O thou mighty Lord God. Those kinds of things, like, oh, stop it. You're bothering me. No, you just speak to the Lord because he's your friend. I didn't speak to my dad like that. Oh, magnificent Frank, you know. Perchance, may I have the keys to yon car? To thy Cadillac. I didn't do that. You know, you speak to the Lord the way that you speak to a friend because he is your friend. The Bible in 1 Thessalonians 517 says, pray without ceasing. Pray and speak to the Lord. It's a good thing. When we have opportunity to gather as a church, come and pray. It's a good thing to do that. A third thing, and this is really important too, by the way, is determine what fellowship really is. A lot of people say, well, I have Christian friends and I think that's great. I think you need them, of course. But are they walking with the Lord or are they saying they're Christian friends? You know, because I've had Christian friends who booze it up and Christian friends, quote unquote, who still do the drugs. I have had Christian friends who are still sleeping around. You know, they call themselves Christian. And when I'm talking about Christian friends, I'm talking about people who love the Lord. It's kind of like when my kids were small or young, not so small, they weren't small at this time. They were in their teens and they'd come and they'd say, I'm thinking of going out with so-and-so, and I'd say, really, are they Christian? Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, they're Christian. How do you know? How do you know? Are they go to church? So what? I mean, so did I, you know, and I wasn't a Christian. You know, I go to church for baptisms. I would go to church for weddings. I went to church for certain things, funerals. You know, if you asked me, are you a Christian? I would have said, yes, yes. Because I wasn't a Buddhist. I wasn't a Muslim. I wasn't a Hindu. I wasn't an atheist. I was a Catholic. I was raised in the Catholic church and therefore you asked me if I'm a Christian? First church, what are you talking about? Peter's the first pope. I can talk to you about Christian doctrine. That's where I was at. And yet I'm still smoking dope. I'm still drinking. I'm still doing all of the rest because you know what? I'm not into this legalism stuff. Those Protestants over there, they don't drink. They don't smoke. They think they're better than us. They're not better than us. I'm in the true religion. And when I get married, my wife is gonna go to church with the kids for sure, you know? And that's kind of how, that's how it was. That's how it was for me and everybody I knew. And then you get saved and then you start understanding, oh, it's not about religion. It's about knowing God. It's about having a relationship. It's about learning that his word is truth. It's about learning that I can speak to him. It's having friends who love you, who will do almost anything for you because they love you. I told you this morning, if you were in church with us, if not, I'll repeat it. And when I lost my memory, and Marie's driving me home, you know that I've lost my memory if I let her drive. But she knew how to get home. She knew where we lived. And I'm kind of sitting there, looking out the window and the phone rings. And so I open it up low. I was telling you this morning, and it's Rollerys. Hello, David. Hi, Roll. What you doing? Hey, you know what? What? You remember you owe me $1,000? That's what he said, I'm not lying. I am not lying. I said, man, you're a dog, man, you're a dog. He goes, yeah, yeah, but you owe me $1,000. Don't forget. So that's the stuff your friends do to make you feel good. So don't have friends like that. That's the whole point. That's what I'm trying to say. Get real friends. But you know, these are the ones who are with you when you go through your ups and downs. These are the ones who call you up when they know you're down. They're the ones who can put up with you being what you really are. They're the ones that you take your mask off in front of you and you say, this is the true person. And they love you anyway. They don't let you get away with it. They don't say, oh, that's cool, no problem. No, they're your friends. They'll say, no, wait a minute. You know what the word says, and let's do this. Come on now, you have to have friends like that who are serious about Jesus Christ. I do pray you have friends like that. That has been, in my walk, the most important thing. Outside of the first two things I mentioned, reading the word and praying is friendships, friendships. They have kept my feet to the fire. They have kept me right with God. They have kept me accountable to him. They asked me what my soul's all about right now. I need that. You know, when I went through this thing, you know, the first thing my friend Bob Grenier does is he writes me and he says to me, if you need to talk, I'm here. That's what friends do. My friend Randy Walls, Pastor Calvary Upland, comes over brings a meal to us and I didn't even have to pay for this one. That's a first. Jay was gonna cook for us, we said, please don't. Buy it, it's better. But they care. I mean, they stop by. They stay with you, you know, when you're in a hospital and you've got people who are there with you and they don't leave and they're not willing to go until they know you're all right. You've got some friends. We all need that, don't we? You need that. You wanna be solid with Jesus Christ? Develop some close Christian friends. People who love you and love him, who love him more than they love you because they will keep you right with God. Look for them and be that for somebody else. Be that for somebody else. And then obviously, learn to give away your faith. We're living in a time when people are ashamed of sharing about Jesus Christ. They're ashamed of saying what they believe in. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a power of God into salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. I wanna be one of those people who says, this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what God has done. He can do it for you. I'm not ashamed of that. Oh, you idiot, you stupid, mindless, you know, hillbilly, what do you know? I know one thing. Once I was lost, now I'm found. I was blind, now I see. I was deaf, now I hear. I hated people, now I love. I even love you, you jerk. And you know what? Just playing with you, shouldn't have said that. We'll edit it. God changes hearts, doesn't he? He does. And then you can share with other people about the goodness of the Lord. So this one thing, this one thing I do, he says in verse 13, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward. Reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Forgetting, I'm not forgetting just my sins, which I think, by the way, you need to. The enemy has a tendency of redirecting your gaze to things that you left behind. Man, before you were a Christian, you had lots of friends. You had things to do on Friday night. You could go out and party, you could drink to whatever you want, no regrets at a good time. Now you're a Christian and you're looking around and saying, what am I gonna do? What are you gonna do? Read the Bible all day? Come on, do something fun. Your sins have a tendency, maybe it's just me and I'm talking to me, of calling you back. Of calling you back. It's funny how you get saved and you leave behind all this garbage, all this trash, all this heartbreak, all these habits, all of that. You begin to follow the Lord and a year, two years into your walk, you start thinking, well, you know, I'm a believer, I'm saved by grace. A little drink here is no problem. Smoking a joint once in a while is medicinal, got a headache, I think I have glaucoma. And then we make excuses to go back to the vomit. We go back to the mire that we had been washed clean from and we wallow in it again. And then we wake up one day and we say, why am I so miserable? Why? And the Lord says, have you forgotten someone? Oh, who? Who's this talking? Have you forgotten me? I'm telling you, I see that all the time, all the time. They left their first love. They went off after something else. You need to come back. It's not forgetting just the sins, though. He's also no longer caring for the religious life that he once lived. He no longer is trusting in or revaluing his righteousness according to Jewish regulations. He's leaving that behind. And notice in that race, he said, I'm not gonna look over my shoulder as I run. I do not want what I left behind and I refuse to return to what I've been saved out of. I'm gonna pursue God. I'm gonna grow in his grace and I'm gonna rejoice in it. He also says in verse 13, reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Reaching forward is a straining, straining toward those things that lie before me. I'm desiring the fellowship with God. I want perfect knowledge of him, peace. I want joy. I want love. That's what I have in the Lord and that's what I want. And as the athlete strains toward the tape, I'm straining towards my goal of being with Jesus Christ. Some of you were athletes. Some of you perhaps were sprinters. And you know that in races, you can lose a race by glancing over your shoulder. If you don't keep your eye on the tape and if you glance even to see where your opponent is, you can lose a race. I have in, I believe in the church in one of the, in the foyer, a picture of somebody who lost a race by a glance. He looked over his shoulder. And when he looked over his shoulder, he was beaten by the person who kept their eye on the prize. And I used to run. And so when you, when you get to the tape, you actually strain for the tape. You drive through the tape and you try to press through it. And that's how you win races. And some races are won by the width of a hair. And when Michael Phelps was winning one of the races, he won one of the races with his Olymp, for the Olympics by the length of a fingernail. By the length, think about that. What if he was nervous before the race? He'd have lost, you know, but he left it. You know, just real long fingernail. No, the length, look at your fingernail right now. That's how much he won that race by. Amazing. And they said it, they said it is literally the length of a fingernail. That's their, their hands touched at almost the identical second, except for his fingernail was longer than the guys next to him. You won the race, he strained for it. That's how you win. That's how you ought to run. Don't run with this attitude of I'm just enjoying the race. Run to win. Run to win. When I was a kid and I played sports, I played a lot of sports for a long time. I was never the kid on the team who just enjoyed the game. I liked the game, but I liked to win. And I didn't like losing. It just was something that I just was not good at. And when you lose, I don't know. It's just like Vince Lombardi's, you know, it's, it's the only thing. You know, for me, winning was the only thing. God actually had to remove me from sports for a long time because of my carnal attitude of getting so angry if I didn't win. I had to win. And then what happens is I get into the ministry and the Lord says, you remember how you just had to do your best and always come out on top. Why don't you do that for me? But in me, you'll come out on top every time because you're worshiping me. And I said, you know, Lord, I think I'll do that. I think, I think I'm gonna learn to do this one thing. I'm gonna learn to pursue you and to strain towards that prize. That's what he's saying. In verse 14, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I wanna run and I wanna win. This upward call is a heavenly calling. I wanna enter into the gates of glory. I'm not gonna just coast in. I wanna come in, battered perhaps, maybe a little bruised. I wanna come in with my uniform in tatters and the weapons you gave me well used. I wanna come in that condition. And I want to enter in because it's an upward, it's a heavenly call in Jesus Christ. Therefore, he says in verse 15 and 16, and we'll close with this. Let us as many as our mature have this mind. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind. The attitude of the believer, suit Jesus with all your heart and with all your strength. Now, it's interesting how he's saying if you're not in agreement with this, God will show you and correct you. You see, carnality and immaturity often blinds us to eternity. And so he's saying, and that's what he's saying in verse 15, as many as our mature have this mind. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Paul wasn't saying, well, that's my opinion. He's not saying, I'm writing this, but if you disagree, that's cool, no problem. No, he's saying, if you don't agree with what I just said, you're carnal. You are not following the Lord with all your heart and your heart has just been revealed. And he said, God will reveal that to you. And he does through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This was in his opinion. This was a teaching from God. And so his desire is that people have a relationship with God, one that is the number one thing in their life.