Pressing Towards the Goal 2/4

"Matt Emmons had the gold medal in sight. He was one shot away from claiming victory in the 2004 Olympic 50-meter three-position rifle event. He didn’t even need a bulls-eye to win. His final shot only needed to hit the target anywhere.

Normally, the shot he made would receive a score of 8.1, more than enough for a gold medal. But in what was described as an “extremely rare mistake in elite competition,” Emmons fired at the wrong target. Standing in lane two, he fired at the target in lane three. His score for a good shot at the wrong target? 0. Instead of a medal, Emmons ended up in eight place."

His story shows us that it doesn’t matter how accurate you are if you’re aiming at the wrong goal.

The apostle Paul had a goal in sight. It was a goal that drove him, kept him going even when everything else was going wrong around him. As a matter of fact, he was in jail when he wrote this letter (which was actually a pretty common place for him to write his letters. Maybe it was because that was the only time he could sit still long enough to get work done!). Here in his letter to the Philippians we find the second characteristic that we need to have in order to reach our goals in the second half of chapter 3 and verse 13. 

"13B; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,”

In other words, to reach our goals, we must have a single-minded future focus.

This is to say a single desire that is based on what you hope to accomplish ahead of you. Paul here seems to make a pretty big emphasis on forgetting the past. However, he clearly hadn’t forgotten his. If you look earlier in the chapter, he listed a ton of his accomplishments. So why does he now say that it’s important to forget your past?

I think that it’s because when we become too focused on our past, it limits our present effort and kills any future progress. 

Take for example if someone has done us wrong in the past. The resentment and bitterness (be it real or imagined) can keep us rehearsing the same broken tape over and over again and we’ll carry that baggage with us whenever we meet new people. Or focusing on past sins which, when you keep dwelling on them, make you believe or wonder if God can actually forgive you.

Or the church that keeps remembering the “good ol’ days” when we had x amount of members, or when Pastor X, Elder Y, or Sister Z were here and everything was just rolling along. By contrast, Paul here says that the progressing Christian must cultivate a concentrated forward look to where the Goal lies.

This is a goal that is not caught up on our past success or past failure. Not on our actions, achievements or behaviors, but on realizing that life is all about learning and growing. This is true of both the development of our physical life as well as our spiritual life. 

Who knows what was going through Matt Emmons head when he hit the wrong target. He may have felt that he had success in the bag, but that moment of failed concentration cost him everything. Keep your sights set on the future target because, even though you aren’t all that you should be yet, you also aren’t all that you WILL be yet.