The Strains of Earth

“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.” Phil 3:13-14

As I rewind and review my life there are many things I would love to forget. We all have suffered as a result of our own transgressions or the pain we have suffered at the hands of someone else’s decisions. Paul was speaking of forgetting not only his sins and failures but also forgetting the things that once were of utmost importance to him. He strains toward what is ahead, which was his new life in Christ, along with privileges He was afforded through Christ.

In this verse I can’t help but notice the word strain which certainly denotes challenge and effort on our part. The definition for strain is to make extreme effort and, ‘to have to make an unusually great or even painful physical or mental effort in order to do something.’ Since we are living in a fallen world, to strain towards Christ requires extreme effort with a great deal of sacrifice. We were never created for this world but for the eternal world. All of our efforts must align with our desire to get back home. Our hearts, mind, body and spirit all must come into adjustment to truly envelop that mindset – straining towards the prize of Heaven.

Paul understood this in every sense of the idea. He understood that straining towards what was ahead in Christ meant suffering on this side of the prize. ‘There is a needs-be for us to give ourselves for the life of the world…Fruit-bearing is cross-bearing. We know how the Lord Jesus became fruitful – not by bearing His cross only, but by dying on it. There are not two Christs – an easy-going Christ for easy-going Christians, and a suffering, toiling Christ for exceptional believers. There is only one Christ. Are we willing to abide in Him and so to bear fruit?’ Hudson Taylor in Believer’s Bible Commentary, p. 1974.

To strain forward is to bear much fruit in the life of the in-between. Then, one glorious day the in-between life crosses over to the realized life for which we were created.