I have been an NBA fan for a long time.  Fortunately, my favorite team is in the NBA finals this year, and, as of the writing of this blog, they are up 2-0 in the series and look pretty dominant.  Still, I like what the players are saying.  In postgame interviews, several of the players, as well as the coach, said, “We haven’t won anything yet.”  That is the right attitude to have if the team is to avoid complacency and have a letdown.  It might still be a long, hard-fought series with ups and downs.

Complacency can creep into our lives as Christians as well.  To avoid it we must have the same attitude suggested above.  Paul also thought along these lines.

Philippians 3:12 (ESV)
¹²  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.

Paul was up big on his competition, that competition being Satan and his allies, but he knew he had not yet won his home in heaven.  So, he kept on pressing.  This is the winning mentality that we must possess.  No matter what little gains we make in our daily effort to please God, we have not yet reached the goal.  We must keep on pressing.

Our journey to the finish line is not always a smooth one.  There are going to be setbacks along the way because the devil wants nothing more than to stop our progress.  When adversity invades our lives, we must be determined to continue our forward progress, knowing that such adversity is inevitable.

Acts 14:22 (ESV)
²²  Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

The key here is “continuing in the faith.”  If we fight through the difficulties of life and keep pressing forward, we will ultimately receive our prize of heaven, and all the suffering in the world will not compare to the glory we will receive (Romans 8:18).

Perhaps more dangerous than the difficulties of life are the achievements that we experience.  Sometimes handling blessings are harder than enduring bad times.  This is when we must remember that no matter how good things get, we have not won yet.  We have not obtained our prize, that is, experiencing the power of the resurrection and the joy of being made perfect in heaven.  We have to keep our eyes on the prize because the race is not over.

What do runners do when they cross the finish line?  They stop running.  If we ever start thinking that we have reached the height of our spirituality and that we have become so strong in Christ that there is no room for improvement, we will do what runners do when they cross the finish line—we will stop pressing toward the goal for the prize.  Every once in awhile, you see a football player running toward the goal line for a touchdown, but he starts to slow down before he actually gets into the endzone and gets tackled short of the goal.  We do not want that to happen to us spiritually, do we?  Let us not start celebrating prematurely.  Let us all keep pressing toward the goal for the prize.

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.