Press On! | 4.19.26

``Satan wants your past to consume you. He wants your past to constrict you. God will use your past to propel you. Literally to use your past as as a launching pad into what he has in store for you. That's the picture that I see. Do you see it? It's it's almost like a runner in the blocks. This picture. It's like man I gotta forget this. See how God can use this to propel you forward? My focus is not looking like this because I'll just my focus is this but my focus is here, onward, upward. I gotta fix my eyes on Jesus and God will use your past to propel you forward into the future that he has for you. Amen? [00:25:05] (60 seconds)  #PastToPropel

What he's saying here, to live is Christ, to die is gain is this, as long as I am alive, as long as I'm here on earth, as long as I have a breath inside of my lungs, Jesus it is all about you. Everything that I do, this this this this reaching forward, I'm reaching forward to you. I'm I'm living my life in pursuit of you Jesus. To live, it's all you Jesus. But if I die and when I die, in fact, I welcome it because if I die and when I die then it's even better because now I get to be with you. [00:56:06] (52 seconds)  #LiveForJesus

That word in itself, press, I'm pressing on. It insinuates this that there must be some sort of resistance. In order to say this word that I have to press on it means that I'm pressing against something. I'm have to press through something. I tell our leadership a lot especially on Sunday mornings like today you guys we have to press in. We have to press through. Why? Because there is spiritual warfare all around us. There absolutely is resistance. So Paul is saying, listen, I have to have this mindset that I have to press on. I have to press through. I can't stop. [00:31:19] (52 seconds)  #PressOnForward

And here's what we understand as we're talking about our past and not memorializing our past. We don't memorialize our wounds. But we do display and we memorialize the scars that we have. Why? Because scars represent healing in our life. And so I say this often, don't hide your scars. Talking spiritually right? The things that have happened to us, don't your scars are your testimony. They're your testimony to what God has done in your life. Listen listen we are wounded and and and for so long unless you allow that healing to happen in your life you will continue to bleed out. [00:38:53] (53 seconds)  #ShareYourScars

And if you know about that word stagnant, it's never a good thing. It always describes things that that are full of death and decay. If water doesn't move after a while, it it becomes stagnant. Right? It's like the swamps, the marshes, it's it's where all the nasty stuff begins to grow because there's no movement. Once once there's movement, their life begins to happen again. Right? So you think about this because we've been talking about this here at Pursuit Culture for this whole year since January about the race. Right? Run with endurance the race set before you. [00:26:37] (41 seconds)  #MoveDontStagnate

If any of you that have ran a marathon or a half marathon you know that you have to train in order to do it. Unless you are just in super duper shape and you work out every day, run every day, you have to train. You have to work your body up to a certain point to be able to run that type of distance. Right? One of the things that they tell you, this is like elementary for runners is whatever you do during this running of this 26 miles or 13 miles whatever it is, whatever you do don't stop. You can slow down. Maybe you maybe you started too fast and you need to pace yourself a little bit, you could slow down but don't stop. [00:28:08] (50 seconds)  #RunKeepGoing

But but you have to understand when Satan's whisper tries to come in you have to recognize that that is not from God right there. Because even in the good things, the victories, the seasons of our life that that man we we celebrated maybe an accomplishment or or whatever it is, we we think about those things and then here comes this whisper again. Yeah. You're thinking about that now. That was good. It's never gonna get any better. It's the same line. It's the same whisper. But a lot of times we're less guarded towards that whisper in that moment because we only think about the negative negative negative evil things with Satan but I'm telling you he's very cunning and he's very conniving. [00:17:59] (54 seconds)  #RejectTheWhisper

but you also have to understand that God wants to heal you. He wants to heal you. He wants to restore you. He wants to make you whole. Those things that have happened, those things that you've had to walk through in your life, he wants to heal you. Now now through this healing, through this restoration, this is really how we're able to move forward. But you gotta understand the heart of your father is that he wants to take your heart and maybe there's some brokenness there. Maybe there's some some wounds that are there. We've all experienced things, some of us more than others. But your father wants to heal you. He wants to make you whole. He wants to make you whole. There's a healing that God wants to do in your life. [00:36:06] (60 seconds)  #HeRestores