Finding Joy Where You Are: Pressing On Towards Joy

SERMON TITLE: Pressing On Towards Joy
SPEAKER: John Huh
SYNOPSIS: In today’s passage, Paul uses a sports analogy
to teach us about perseverance - what it means “to press on
toward the goal to win the prize.”

SCRIPTURE: Philippians 3:4-14

though I myself have reasons for such confidence.


If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the
flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of
the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of
Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal,
persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law,
faultless.


7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for
the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything
a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them
garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not
having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but
that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that
comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know
Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and
participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the
dead.


12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have
already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that
for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and
sisters, 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, 14 I press on toward the goal to win
the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.