After the Apostle Paul describes how he strives to “win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14), he says that he expects other “mature” Christians to believe and behave in the same way.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But he is open to some may not be as gung-ho as he is: “If on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.” (3:15)<\/p>\n\n\n
Then Paul drops a sentence that is one of the most underappreciated in all of Scripture: “Only let us live up to what we have already attained.” (3:16)<\/p>\n\n\n
When I was younger, I was often frustrated with the slow progression of my Christian walk. I wanted to be Super Christian. Instantly. I wanted to live miraculously.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And if it couldn’t happen today, then tomorrow would suffice.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
With more and more days as not-so-super Christian, I finally decided that I had to be patient with God. He just doesn’t move very fast!<\/p>\n\n\n
Now I wonder at God’s patience with me<\/i><\/b>!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It turns out that I wasn’t ever waiting on God to move me to the next level, He was always patiently waiting on me to start living what He had already taught me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the Apostle Paul describes how he strives to “win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14), he says that he expects other “mature” Christians to believe and behave in the same way.\u00a0 But he is open to some may not be as gung-ho as he is: “If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10066,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10065\/revisions\/10066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}