Holding Fast to What We’ve Already Attained

“Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.”

~Philippians 3:15-16 (NRSV).

We’re perhaps always hungry for spiritual growth, but how is it that we throw away good previously hard-fought ground to go after a new idea or thought that the Lord’s given us, forgetting what we ought to have brought along?

This is most relevant to those mature in the faith—or as Paul might put it, those still maturing, and continuing to do right through life, by ‘pressing on’. We do not ‘press on’ by falling behind.

Chasing the New Idea

We’re all destined to enter new seasons. Life changes or we do and therefore old methods wither. That’s life.

God is most certainly revealing new things to us all the time. It is the diligent servant of the Father that takes their growth in the Spirit seriously, adopting these new things as they apply to their lives.

We just ensure what we’re told is both biblical and fits, for there is another who masquerades as God. Enters does this, for us, our discernment. “Is this God speaking?”

Where we have to check the transliteration of these messages is how they fit with previous good growth. God’s not changing our track dramatically from that which he’s already shown us; we’re not ‘kept on our toes’ like this. God’s nature is to reveal plans with love and certainty.

Chasing the new idea has to fit in the context of what we’ve already come to know, unless previous knowledge is proven false and an overhaul is due.

The Risks and Experience

Experience is likely to have taught us that some risks are not worth taking. As we roll the boulder up the hill of our burgeoning spiritual maturity, chocking it every now and again as we rest along our journeys, we’re loath to have it slip back. We place our chock with safety, security and certainty.

Experience in life is not something to be sneezed at. It is a great benefit to us, and to others also who may draw on our experience, trusting it. Using our experience, however, accords us to reel it out through the presently-appended wisdom to know how to apply it.

We do not throw to the dogs what the angels have brought tenderly to us.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.