[AMP]PHIL 3:10[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [[b]which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope]
11That if possible I may attain to the [[c]spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body].
What does it mean to attain?
Attain carries the connotation that we don’t just wake up day and have our goal but that each day we wake up, we have acquired just a little bit more of what we hope to have more abundantly one day.
I think we miss out on that perspective if we are perfectionists. Perfectionists cannot deal with the middle time – the time when things are incomplete; imperfect; not quite shiny enough.
Here is how Paul encourages me (continuing in the above chapter):
12Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own.
13I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
14I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.
Or as Joyce Meyer would say: “I’m not where I need to be but thank God I’m not where I used to be. I’m okay and I’m on my way.”
Praise God for that revelation. The believer bound up in fear, guilt and regret is ineffective (stuck). When we walk by grace, on the other hand, we continue to grow despite our imperfections, our incompleteness, and our lackluster state.
Remember, You cannot get to the finish line without running the race. You cannot get to perfection without passing through imperfection. There is no peak without a valley.
