Perhaps we need to understand that the opposite of reaching forth is to go backwards, or in our religious terms, “backsliding”. It’s called that because that’s exactly what happens…a person stops growing, or moving forward in his Christian life. He may sit still for a while, and during this time he stops praying or reading his Bible, and many times he stops going to church.
If he does attend church, he is uninvolved in the activities of the church. His prayer life becomes less vibrant and exciting, until before long, he finds more pleasure in hanging around with the world’s crowd than with God’s people, and in doing worldly things than Godly things. At some point, this person may completely lose all interest in God, and to reach him at this point will be very difficult. You may hear him make statements like, “I know what I need to do” or “God is still with me”, but he shows no interest in getting his life back on track with the Lord. That is why Paul is warning us in this scripture to forget the past, don’t hang on to thoughts of the worldly things and activities that once held us captive. We need to cut loose from them and walk in the opposite direction. We have been made free from the bondage of sin if Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. The activities of the world will destroy us if we keep looking back at them.In Luke 9:62 Jesus said, “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Imagine this scene, a man goes out to the field to plow the soil and make it ready to plant his crops. But as he goes along, he is constantly looking over his shoulder to see where he has been rather than where he is going. By the time he reaches the other side of the field, the row he is plowing will be so crooked and he will be way off the line that he intended to plow that he couldn’t think of planting there. He wouldn’t be fit to be a farmer. He cannot keep his sights on where he has been in the past and also expect to move forward. No! He must look straight ahead…He needs to fix his eyes on an object at the place where he wants to go, and then keep striving until he gets there. That is his vantage point…and Jesus is our vantage point! We need to keep our eyes planted on Him until we get to where He is and become like He is. Hallelujah!
Over and over in scripture, we are shown examples of people whose hearts remained back in the world from where they came. In Genesis 19, we are told of God’s destruction of Sodom and how Lot and his family were delivered from the destruction. They were given orders to leave the city and not to look back. But his wife’s heart was so attached to that evil city and her life there that, as she was leaving, she looked back, and she was immediately turned into a pillar of salt. The Apostle Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy “for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world”. (2 Timothy 4:10) Demas had previously been a faithful brother in the Lord to Paul, but he failed to forget those things which were behind, and so he stopped reaching forth.
The Israelites kept thinking of Egypt when things got tough in the wilderness. Exodus 16:2-3 gives us this account of them, “Then the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel said to them, “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” They trusted the Egyptians rather than God to fill their needs. Isn’t it ironic that they had forgotten about the bondage, the cruel taskmasters, and the harsh and violent treatment they received back in Egypt? All they could remember was the food they had eaten and how it satisfied their flesh.
Paul said, “I press toward the mark.” Until living like a Christian becomes normal for us, we will struggle with those things in our past. We must deliberately press forward. We cannot allow ourselves to become complacent or comfortable with the place where we are in our walk with the Lord…our Christian life should be one of constant growth. No matter how far we have come, we should never stop becoming more like Christ in our lives and we should never stop learning from His Word. There will be times of stillness when it seems that nothing is happening. But those times are rare, and even then we should be aware that we will start moving again, longing for and praying for God to move us forward. But we should never allow ourselves to begin to move backward in our Christian growth. We should be continually “reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” We will never know Him completely until we see Him face to face, but how exciting our lives can be now as we strive for that goal. Are your heart and spiritual eyes planted on Jesus as your vantage point, or are you still glancing back at “Sodom” from time to time? The world has nothing for the child of God. All the old life offers is pain and misery. Remember what it was that brought you to Jesus in the first place and make sure you are pressing forward. In the world there is destruction, but in Jesus, there is Life forevermore.
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