Heartbeatنموونە

Is there an area of your life where you feel like you’ve ‘arrived’?  Think about stuff you are really good at, things that just seem like a natural part of life where you excel.  Are you good at making people laugh?  Are you good at helping people?  Maybe you’re just really good at school, sports, video games, playing music, singing…basically anything where you’ve got skills, and you know it.  

In psychology there’s something called the “end of history illusion.” The idea is essentially this: all of us tend to believe that we have already become the person we are supposed to be and, as a result, stop striving.

I have seen this play out in my own life many times. Enough time studying a subject, working at the same job, even hanging out with the same group of people makes me feel like I have learned almost all I can learn.  When I start feeling this way, my personal growth begins to slow. And when I start to get comfortable, change catches me off guard.  The idea that we are done changing prevents us from growing! 

Philippians 3:13 can help us avoid that “arrived” mentality.  “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead . . .” Paul, the greatest missionary the world has ever seen, considered himself “not yet there”. Not yet perfect. Not yet fully what Christ had redeemed him for. And this “not yet” attitude is what drove him to pursue growth in his life. He says in verse 12, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.” Imagine a world where we lived with a “not there yet” attitude. 

What would it look like for you to live with the conviction that you had “not yet” arrived?  What areas of your life are you most confident and, thus, most vulnerable to being “caught off guard” right now?