DISCIPLESHIP MOVES US FORWARD - Pastor Lucien Matillano

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DISCIPLESHIP MOVES US FORWARD

Philippians 3:12-21

‘I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.’ That is how Paul thinks of what we call his

conversion. He would never have ‘turned’ unless a hand had been laid upon him.

A strong loving grasp had gripped him in the midst of his career of persecution,

and all that he had done was to yield to the grip, and not to wriggle out of it. He is

putting out a gentle and a firm hand, and laying it upon the shoulders of all of us.

Have we yielded? Have we resisted, when we were laid hold of? Did we try to get

away? Did we plant our feet and say, ‘I will not be drawn,’ or did we simply neglect

the pressure?

A great many of us live as if we thought that the only thing that Christianity is

meant to do to us is that it bars the gates of some future hell, and brings to us

the message of forgiveness. We cannot think too nobly or too loftily of that gift of

forgiveness, the initial gift that is laid in every Christian man’s hands, but we may

think too exclusively of it, and a great many of us do think of it as if it were all that

was to be given.

A painter has to clear away the old paint off a door, or a wall, before he lays on the

new. The initial gift that comes from being laid hold of by Jesus Christ is the burning

off of the old coat of paint. But that is only the preliminary to the laying on of the

new. A man away in the backwoods will spend a couple of years after he has got

his bit of land in felling and burning the trees, and rooting out and destroying the

weeds. But is that what he got the clearing for? That is only a preliminary to sowing

the seed.

My friend! If Jesus Christ has laid hold of you, and you have let Him keep hold of

you, it is not only that you may be forgiven, not only that you may sun yourself

in the light of God’s countenance, and feel that a new blessed relation is set up

between you and Him, but there are great purposes lying at the back of that, of

which all that is only the preliminary and the preparation. No Christian man is

made a Christian only in order that he may secure his own salvation; there is the

world to think of.

Dear friends--and especially you younger Christians--Christ has laid hold of you.

Well and good! That is the beginning. He has laid hold of you for an end. That end

will not be reached without your effort, and that effort must be perpetual. It is a

life-long task!

I encourage you not to stop now, but move on until you reach that goal that He

alone has laid upon you.