The Last Place You Look

The Last Place You Look--August 22, 2016

"Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus." [Philippians 3:12-14]

There's a reason that the lost thing you are searching for will be in the last place you look.

The reason, of course, is that once you have found the thing you were looking for, you quit looking.  And you can move on to using the thing you had spent all that energy and time searching for.

That's obvious enough, right?  If you've gone turning your house upside down looking for your missing car keys, you don't go and ransack the garage once you've found that you had left them on the kitchen counter by the stovetop.  If you have been searching for the best car to buy, and you find exactly what you are looking for at the price you have been hoping for, you buy it--you stop searching and you actually purchase the car. Once they are found... they are found!

That should be a freeing realization, too, if you think about it. Once you've got the thing you were looking for, you can stop looking for more. Or, as more often happens in life, once you realize that you have been given all you need for contentment already, you don't have to keep wasting energy or time searching for what you have already been graced with. When I am scrambling around the dining room table looking to see if I have left a pencil there, and it turns out that my even-nicer-writing pen is just behind my laptop there on the table top, I don't keep searching for a pencil that might never have been there, but I pick up the pen and start writing. Or when I'm reaching into the dryer for my white check dress shirt, once I realize it was right there under those jeans all along by the front of the dryer door I don't keep looking inside the stainless steel drum to see if somehow more identical shirts have magically appeared.  No, once I've found my shirt I go and iron it and put it on--I do with it what it was meant to be used for.

 

The New Testament talks about what it is to have found Christ in the same way.  Or more accurately, the New Testament talks about how Christ has already found us--and at some point, it dawns on us (we usually call this "faith") that we have been found and consequently have everything we were really ever in need of in the first place. Paul talks here in Philippians about the difference it made in his life to finally give up trying to impress his way into righteousness and to obey his way into God's acceptance... only to discover that he was already accepted and God had declared him already righteous.  That freed him.  All of a sudden, he didn't have to waste time and energy and life striving to get something that God had already given him for free.  And once he realized that, he could "forget what lies behind" in his own life--no more fussing about the heartache and hindrances he had faced, no more nervous fretting about whether he had done enough, and no more need to keep looking for what Christ had already given him.

And once you realize you don't have to keep checking the couch cushions for the car keys that are already in your hand, well, you can actually get out the door and get on with your day. That's the Christian life in a nutshell.  It is about the change in our hearts--which becomes a change in our calendars, our wallets, our social circles, and our priorities--that happens when we realize in faith that we don't have to keep seeking after what God has already placed in our hands.  The keys are right there. 

So, like Paul, we will discover more and more that all the things the world had promised us would make us happy just can't do the trick... but that we will find joy that comes from knowing we are accepted in Christ and beloved just as we are.  And we will discover then we don't have to keep wasting our time and beating our heads against a wall wondering why a new promotion doesn't automatically fill the empty place in our lives, or why the new house or car soon lose their magical allure once we've bought them. It's not that you bought the wrong house or the wrong color car--it's that assuming we would find our fulfillment, our joy, in those things was always a doomed search when our deepest sense of fulfillment was already in our lap as the free gift of Christ "who has made me his own." And we will discover that we don't have to keep worrying about whether we have done enough to make God accept us, or whether we look religious enough--no, our acceptance is already a given (literally--it is a gift!) that was never obtainable with a better resume or set of references.

Once we realize that we've been searching under every rock and tree for the meaning and the belonging that God gave us before we even knew we needed it, then there's no longer the monkey on our backs screeching at us to keep looking, to keep relentlessly striving after... anything else. And we can actually get about the business of living fully, rather than running around trying to find the stuff we think we need (or were told we need) in order to live that abundant life.  Like Paul says, we can forget all the stuff that is behind us that we had been spending our time looking through, and we can press on, knowing that all we really needed has been in our hands all along.

It's true: the thing you are looking for is in the last place you look--because if you are smart at all, you know to stop the quest once you've got what you were really after all along.Today, what will you be freed to do now that we don't have to go seeking after some way to earn God's approval, and now that we don't have to chasing after empty promises from the voices of the day telling us what they thing will make us happy?

Today, what will happen if you and I leave the couch cushions behind and head out the car with the keys we had not noticed were already in our grip?

Lord Jesus, let us be so confident that you have made us your own that we will no longer spend our energy looking elsewhere for what you have given us for free in you.