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Keeping the Eye on the Prize

                    I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Php. 3:14

 

At every moment we are making choices of mental focus. We are determining what we will accept as the object of our attention. The idea is that any and all such objects are to be praiseworthy and profitable in line with the calling on our lives in Christ and His kingdom.

Whatever governs the focus of our attention at any time sets the course for the rest of our living, determining whether our life is being profitably expended on the King and His true purposes for us and for those of His within the domain of our influence. The chief barometer of what governs our focus is whatever comes out of our mouths. It is our words. This is where the government of Christ’s kingdom begins and where its substance is proven.

So what are you talking about—right now? What has captured your attention? To what are you giving yourself in light of the upward calling of Christ? For that matter, what is the upward calling of Christ?—on you, on any of us as disciples, as the church? If we don’t know what the “upward call of God in Christ Jesus” really is, then most assuredly very little of what we are talking about will reflect profitability relative to that call.

So let’s get the call straight first, then measure everything else being said in light of it. The upward call in Christ is very simple. It is to arrive at the goal of glorified immortality joined to Christ resulting from a mortal life given to obeying the necessary sub-commands that produce the draining of self’s remaining power out of our souls until Christ’s spirit may rise from within us so forcefully as to displace these mortal bodies altogether.

That was easy. Yet its reality is hardly known or being profitably achieved in the lives of most of us. Instead, because the real call is not known or not engaged as a reality to be “pressed toward,” our lives are instead spun around the plethora of “sub-commands” and “sub-callings” of ministry and “sub-engagements” of life’s issues that have usurped the upward call. The “kingdom of God” has thus become totally redefined in terms of promulgating those sub callings and issues.

So it is on every hand that one is consumed with advancing his “ministry” while another is driven by fixing or fighting the latest social evil—all in the name of “the kingdom of God.” That is where their mental focus is lodged, and that is all they can talk about. There is no more talk about salvation, the gospel, repentance, holiness, sanctification, eternal values or the quest for immortality—which is exactly the way the devil likes it.

When the sub-callings displace the upward calling, it not only falsely redefines the meaning of the kingdom, but goes on to de-form our theology through false beliefs about our relationship to this life and this world. The world’s issues are now made the chief object of our attention and our affection, “in Christ’s name” of course. When this deformity occurs under the auspices of the anointing and “the Presence,” it results in false prophesying, false intercession and false worship all centered on the preservation of mortal life in this world.

There is nothing really new in what is being said here. But the magnitude of its import has grown exponentially in proportion to the magnified noise in the spiritual airwaves over the issues having captured the hearts and minds of most believers, disciples, prophets and intercessors since Covid and the 2020 presidential election in America.

This is in no way to discount the import of the sub-callings God has laid on us for facing down world issues. We are sub-called to speak and stand up in conflict relative to these things. But very few demonstrate any knowledge of the arch upward call, much less a mind fixed on pressing toward it. (The only semi-mainstream prophetic ministry I know at this time speaking forth anything close to such vision is that of Paul Keith Davis, followed somewhat perhaps by Terry Bennett.)

But in this land, most believers’ definition of the “high calling in Christ Jesus” is to “save America!” That is what governs their minds, their words, their theology, their prophecy and their intercession. Yet who is out there with a hearable voice to press us on to complete the bridge to immortality?

It is for this cause that the world system, particularly the media, has and continues to make mincemeat of the prophetic movement. And understand please, that any of the prophesying coming forth from these mired quarters offering hope of a “new generation rising up” or “being birthed” to challenge all this evil—to the degree it is true—will only come to pass by those who actually obtain the prize of the high immortal calling!

See that the immortals are a generation who will have lost all identity in America and will be displacing and replacing its beastly national institutions, not reconstructing them. They will be presiding over the birth of an entirely new and different “nation” with a different name under a government whose authority is executed from the heavenly Mount Zion. Further, none of these prophecies now will reverse the ancient course God has already appointed to purge the compromised American church through Great Tribulation, to end the Times of the Gentiles by bringing all the nations—including America—to judgment on the mountains of Israel and to conclusively capture the heart of the remaining natural seed of Israel to launch the manifest Messianic-Kingdom Age.

The point of this article then is to keep bringing disciples back into focus on the real prize. Understand that unless we stay focused on the prize, we will not receive the prize, because we will not qualify for it. Much is at stake in these few words. Assume nothing based in casual hand-me-down eschatology. We must press on for that prize! Now is not the time to succumb to distraction based in all the conflictory social rhetoric thrust upon us. It is time more than ever to keep our hearts clean and undistracted from the pursuit of Christ up Mount Zion. Defend your quiet time in Christ to the death! Defend your inner sanctuary at all costs.

To be sure, we will have more to write about sub-calling issues, especially about recognizing and standing up to the nature of the beast system now smothering us. But nothing we say regarding the warfare of the hour must displace our clear sharp focus on our prize. Rather, everything we engage here below otherwise by labor or contest must be made to serve that upward call. For in service to any lesser earthly goal, it will surely fail, and our labor will be in vain.

May you now then find encouragement to preserving your single eye toward that highest goal, no matter to what else here below you have been engaged for Christ’s sake.

 

Chris Anderson

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

11/21




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