Never Give Up

 

I went to Walgreens today to pick up my pictures.  They had a booth to sign up to be a blood marrow donor and one of the ladies there asked me if I wanted to sign up so I said I would.  After I filled out the paper work and did the swab she said I could pick out a bracelet.  There were all the same, saying delete bone cancer, except one that had Phil. 3:14 showing.  The other side of it said, Never Give Up.  Of course that one caught my eye and I wondered what it said.  I asked if I could have it and she said yes.  She looked through her whole bag of bracelets and that was the only one with a verse on it.  Which we both thought was very odd and a little cool. 

I looked it up and this is what the verse said.

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

~Phil. 3:14

I really liked that so then I looked up Philippians 3 and read it.. very powerful and so much what I want! 

Here is Philippians 3:1-14

No Confidence in the Flesh

1 Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. 2 Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by His Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

 

Although I loved this whole passage, the italicized is the part that spoke to me the most.