Go PSU! - Pressing Toward the Mark

I am sitting at my favorite local coffee shop, Maine Bean, sipping my coffee and logged on to their wi-fi getting caught up on PSU football. Penn State preseason ranking is number 19 in the AP poll. The Nittany Lions (11-1) squad ended last season ranked number 3 and were Big Ten co-champions. They are returning 34 lettermen and 11 starters from last year's team. It should be a good season. However, the players cannot rest on their past laurels. If they think their past will carry them this year, they are mistaken. Coach Paterno has to prepare the players to play this year's games. Last years wins can build confidence, but those wins cannot be a substitution for what the team must do this year. Which leads me to my thought today: Our past spiritual victories are not a substitution for the accomplishments that we must do today for Christ. Paul said, "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, 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, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Php 3:7-14 NIV).