Striving To Press On

There’s no doubt of your need to press on. To keep on. None at all. It is so very real and so direly necessary for life that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt just how much you need to keep pressing on.

Into Christ, that is.

Because only He is life.

For when you stop striving to press on into Christ and instead start striving for Christ, there is no rest. It’s what happens when you stop spressing on into Christ. Every time. There is no rest. And no satisfaction or contentment. Yes, you know when you stop striving into Christ and instead start striving for Christ, to do this Christian life. There is no life.

Because when you strive for Christ, to do this Christian life, you are seeking wisdom over knowing the Author of Life. And you will strive for results instead of relationship, and blessing instead of being. For you drift further from the One Who is Life.

And it’s Christ Who calls you to press on into Him. Again and again. He calls you to Himself.

To strive to keep in the love of God (Jude 21), to strive to enter salvation (Luke 3:24), to strive to enter rest (Hebrews 4:11) and to enter through the narrow door (Luke 13:24), to strive for holiness (Hebrews 12:14).

It’s all a striving to press on into Christ, every time.

Because Christ Jesus is the One Who is love (1 John 4:16), Who is your salvation (Isaiah 12:2), Who is rest for your soul (Matthew 11:29), Who is the narrow door (John 10:9), Who is holiness (1 Corinthians 1:30). So He calls you to strive into Him alone. “Come unto Me,” He calls (Matthew 11:28), again and again.

Oh, there’s no doubt of your need to press on. God asks you to strive into Him! To press into Him! To cling so tightly to Him that nothing else matters but knowing Him. That’s the only kind of striving He asks of you. Because it’s the only kind of striving that gives you the One Who is Life, Christ Jesus Himself!

****

“For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the LORD, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory...” - Jeremiah 13:11 ESV

"...that I may gain Christ and be found in him, ...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, ...that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
...Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." - Philippians 3:8-12 ESV