Pressing Toward the Mark

I think the Apostle Peter is a remarkable character of Biblical history. I like Peter because I so closely identify with him. Perhaps you do, too.


Peter was always a well-intentioned disciple of Jesus, but he was head-strong and cocky, and his mouth often got him into trouble. One minute he is being commended by Jesus for recognizing Christ's divinity, and the next he is being reprimanded for trying to dissuade Jesus from going to the cross.

I identify with Peter because while he was well-intentioned, he often did and said stupid things, and his character was a long way from perfect. Peter gives me hope, because even after going so far as to deny the Savior, Peter did not give up on himself, but got back up, dusted himself off, and proceeded in his life of faith. And he went on to become one of the most important apostles of the early Church, penning two of the most concise and eloquent epistles, First and Second Peter, two of my personal favorite books of the Bible.

Here's the thing that strikes me about Peter. He wasn't perfect, but he didn't settle for groveling in self-pity or defeat. He struggled against his own sin, and he overcame in the end. The Apostle Paul, too, also considered himself a fellow struggler, and even wrote toward the end of his life that he did not consider himself to have attained the goal of his high calling in Christ, and he daily pressed on toward the mark. Imagine that! The great apostle Paul, a man who was once taken up in the spirit to heaven and shown revelations that he was not even allowed to talk about, still struggled in the flesh! (I imagine, though, that Paul's struggles were a far sight different than most of ours....whattaya think?)

Are you a fellow struggler? I am. I struggle with sin and temptation every day, and that used to bother me. I was discouraged by the fact that I had to fight against myself so often, until I heard a liberating message by Dr. David Jeremiah, whose message on fighting the good fight of faith set me free from self-condemnation. He admitted that he struggled, too, and that he worried about people who said they were Christians but who did not seem to struggle against sin. If a person is not struggling against sin, that means that they have accepted it and given in to it, and have accepted their current state as permanent.

Here's Luke struggling with
bad-attitude temptations.
What a warrior! :-)

I don't know about you, but I do not accept my current state as permanent. I want to go on toward maturity in Christ and experience the fullness of a life fine-tuned to the frequency of His Spirit. And so, therefore, I embrace the struggle. I may come to my personal place of maturity bloodied and muddied and bearing the battle scars of repeated failures and straining toward overcoming my sinful nature, but by golly, I'm going to get there. I'm not going to rationalize spiritual lethargy and feel content in allowing my sinful nature to dominate my behavior. If I have to get into heaven missing a hand, so to speak, then that's what I'll do.

Are you struggling today against your worldly nature? Good! You're in good company! Like Dr. Jermiah, I would worry about you if you weren't struggling. The fact is, when we signed up for this life of faith, we signed up for battle! We didn't sign up for a cushy, Lay-Z-Boy experience. We will have to fight against an unseen spiritual world that hates us and wants to trip us up, and we will have to battle against our own inborn sinful desires....that is, if we want the character of Christ. Sure, you can choose not to fight and continue in a life of self-centerdness and sin, but I'm not convinced that a church-going person that continues living the way he/she did before a supposed conversion ever really experienced salvation in the first place, because a true conversion will change what one loves and changes a person's priorities.

I know many of my readers will identify with this: A truly regenerate person will have different priorities in their child-rearing, in their entertainment choices, in their dress code, and nearly every other aspect of life, and sometimes those standards are difficult to live by in this post-modern world when nearly everyone else seems to be going in the opposite direction. It's a struggle sometimes to hold your kids to such a loftier standard than their peers, and sometimes its difficult to hold ourselves to loftier standards than our own peers. But we continue to press on because it is our desire to honor Christ, and not the world.

So if you sometimes get weary of the struggle, just know that God loves Simon Peters. He loves those who continue to press on against tremendous opposition and personal failures. He sees your efforts, and will reward you accordingly. The fact that you are struggling in the first place identifies you as a follower of Christ, because if you were not in the family, you would see no reason to struggle against your sin or see a need to strain toward a higher standard of character. Not that the higher standard is what saves you, because that was covered by your faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross. But a continued attitude of repentance and a tenacious inner fire to strain toward Christ-likeness is evidence that you have the genuine faith which the book of James refers to (see James 2:14-26).

In closing, I find this passage from the Apostle Paul both a source of encouragement in that even Paul struggled, and a source of inspiration that Paul was always wanting to get better even though he was considered the greatest apostle.

"I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Jesus Christ, is calling me." -Philippians 3:12-14

So struggle on, fellow strugglers!