Speaking of the call God had upon him, the apostle Paul wrote: "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, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Phil 3:13-14).
Paul was encouraging us to, as he did, leave behind our former lives outside of Christ, to not rest on our former accomplishments and to not allow our former failures to hold us back. We are new in Christ and what came before is not only unimportant but can hold us back or tie us down. Pride of past accomplishments and regret of past failures can equally become stumbling blocks. Our sights should be squarely on Jesus and the path he lays out before us.
As important as leaving behind the achievements and failures are to following Christ, there is one other, even more important leaving behind: Leave behind your personal dreams of how things ought to go and are to be. If you have your life all mapped out, how can you follow the path God has laid before you?
Why would one even look for road markers if he is following his personal GPS to a pre-determined place or outcome? How is there to be room for God's direction if your life is self-directed? God may indeed lead you to a life of which you dreamed, but if you are taking yourself there, how can you be sure it is the life or the calling that comes from God?
My point is that part of the leaving behind Paul speaks of is that of self-rule, which disallows accepting the rule of God. If you have planned out your life in full, where is there room for God's plan? So, from a biblical perspective, leaving behind includes abandoning what you may have sat out ahead in order to reach what God has sat before you. Jus' Say'n.
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