12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, 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.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
“A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.” Thomas Carlyle
“Redemption does not only look back to Calvary. It looks forward to the freedom in which the redeemed stand.” Leon Morris
“You don’t have to know the way back or the way forward – you just need to know The Way.” Ann Voskamp
“On several occasions the New Testament makes clear that cheap grace, the attempt to be justified through faith in Christ without commitment to sanctification, is illegitimate and impossible. The thrust of these passages is not really that we should add works to our faith, as if it were possible to advance one step forward into faith but to hesitate before adding a second step into holiness. Faith and repentance are not separable quantities. To have faith is to receive God's Word as truth and rest upon it in dependent trust; to repent is to have a new mind toward God, oneself, Christ and the world, committing one's heart to new obedience to God. Obviously these two factors are so interwoven that they are experienced as one, so that the condition of justification is not faith plus repentance, but repentant faith.” Richard Lovelace
“He suffers my happiness here to be imperfect, that so I may be pressing on to that place where I shall be perfectly happy forever.” K. H. Bogatzky