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Blooming Inspired Podcast | 167: Not Missing My Appointment (Philippians 3)


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This week Michelle shares from the heart about revelation she feels is critical to the coming new year and season we find ourselves in as believers, global citizens and as women! Join her as she unpacks what she means when she says, “I’m Not Missing My Appointment!” reading from Philippians 2 and 3 about what it means to press into what’s ahead, leave what’s behind and move forward into God’s unlimited potential in your life!
Show Transcript:
You are listening to the Blooming Inspired Podcast on the Blooming Inspired Podcast Network. We exist to empower the voices of women who live their lives #BloomingAlive through Podcast Community. Now, here is your host.
Blooming Inspired Podcast equipping and empowering the voices of women who live their lives Blooming Alive.
Introduction
Hello Wildflower Friend! This is Michelle Bentham, host of Blooming Inspired Podcast. A NEW PODCAST EPISODE!!! I’m so excited. I’ve been getting back into my flow around the podcasting mic this week publishing our In All Seasons podcast yesterday and working up this powerful episode as a follow up.
To say this year has been challenging is an understatement. Can I get an AMEN? n addition to all the Corona craziness and political posturing going on in the world around us - we’ve suffered the loss of my father-in-law in September, welcomed our very first grandchild in July (while on vacation) no less. Just this past week we also welcomed our first great nephew - to his big sister’s delight! And, we have a daughter getting married in November. It’s been a year full of high highs and low lows and everything in between.
Life has been a series of unexpected heartbreaking events alongside expectant and exciting events! This year and the ups and downs of life ebbed and flowed in a maximized and magnified fashion. Scott and I in many instances have had to rely solely on God to both comfort and provide the way as we sought to return home to family in the midst of medical crises and to care for our family in the loss of my husband’s beloved dad.
I’ve spent my time since we got the word Dad went to the hospital splitting my time between helping my mother-in-law and my momma. It’s been a beautiful blessing in the midst of deep sorrow, and a tremendous challenge figuring out how to balance moving to a new office and jumping back into ALL THE THINGS I’ve been working toward these last few years.
And that is just my story… There are millions of people around the world who have had their best laid plans and their lives turned upside down this year. Yesterday as I met with a client God dropped a truth so powerful in my spirit I had to write it down: “The only way to miss your appointment in this season, is to allow disappointment to rule over things you feel you haven’t done instead of focusing on what God is calling you to do now!”
As I’ve weighed that thought and talked to God about it I felt Him pointing me to Paul’s writings in Philippians. Specifically: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14, and that’s in the New American Standard Bible.
Now For This Week’s Reading…
Let’s Pray, Father God, I ask that You would give each person within the sound of my voice eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to know you more. I pray that every person would encounter and be reminded that You think thoughts toward us and those thoughts are plans to prosper us and to bring about our future and hope in You. That as we read Your words of Truth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, we would be changed by them. Let our hearts be inspired to press into You more, to live for more and to experience more so Your glory may be known upon the earth. I ask these things in Jesus’ Holy Name, AMEN.
As we move toward the end of this upside down kinda’ year, I’m going to be talking about the importance of vision and moving forward.
Last October I was in much the same position as I am this October, my husband is working in Wisconsin while I keep the home fires burning back here in Texas. As I spent last fall reflecting and listening to the heart of the Lord for the upcoming new year - I heard three specific words: Vision, Velocity & Victory. As I did, the Lord showed me a picture of a FINISH LINE. I knew this meant that the long season of preparation I’ve been walking out was coming to an end. And with it - all the should’ves would’ves and could’ves were going to be behind me as well. Which brings me back to that quote from my coaching session yesterday.
We often look back at what we’ve missed, what we failed to do or accomplish and we hold onto that disappointment and regret. The Apostle Paul had a life that he believed he was living for God before he met Christ on that Damascus road. But, after his conversion he pursued God’s path wholeheartedly --- and though others might reject him because of his past, he didn’t let that stop him from living out God’s plan and purpose for his redeemed and transformed life.
I believe we can learn so much from his example. How to persevere in adversity - when life knocks you down and the enemy attacks you trying to thwart God’s plan. We must learn to be people with a persevering spirit and a relentless pursuit of all that God is and who Jesus wants to be through us. It’s the only way forward.
Today as we read, I want you to pay attention to the powerful promises that come when we set our gaze upon Jesus, and seek first His Kingdom and righteousness - the prize toward which He calls us heavenward.
I pray you can sense the overwhelming passion of God in my heart toward you - believing that you, too, would fulfill the GOD-SIZED potential He created you to live in. Let’s Begin in Philippians Chapter 3 in The Passion Translation:
Verse 1-2: My beloved ones, don’t ever limit your joy or fail to rejoice in the wonderful experience of knowing our Lord Jesus! I don’t mind repeating what I’ve already written you because it protects you— beware of those religious hypocrites who teach that you should be circumcised to please God.
Did you catch that? Religious hypocrites - holding fast to traditions - will lead us into dead works. What religious traditions might you be observing that God is asking you to let go of at this very moment?
For me, God has been arresting my opinions and judgments about and against others from my tightly clenched fists. He gives me discernment to pray and protect me, not to tear others down. But, my words and my mind sometimes take off through my mouth before I have a chance to filter them. Another tradition is the church I attend, and the roles women should play in them. I’m learning so much from God about how He sees His daughters and what He desires for them. I see life and light coming to them and a place being prepared for them - a place at His table.
Verse 3: For we have already experienced “heart-circumcision,” and we worship God in the power and freedom of the Holy Spirit, not in laws and religious duties. We are those who boast in what Jesus Christ has done, and not in what we can accomplish in our own strength.
Has your heart been circumcised? I remember a number of years ago - some 15 if I’m counting correctly - I was reading these Pauline epistles with fresh eyes and was hit with a fresh awareness that there was more to water baptism than just a symbolic act of obedience.
The act of water baptism is a prophetic declaration over my life that my old nature and the old me has died, and my new self - what I like to call my originally created self - raises from that burial delivered from my past and the desires of my flesh to walk in submission to Christ not only as Savior but as my Lord.
In that season I prayed those Scriptures and asked God if He would kindly cut away every part of my flesh until only He remained. It was during this same season that I began to pray to Know God the way He knows me. A longing - a hunger and a thirst for both His intimacy and righteousness - was birthed in me in that beautiful season. A longing that has led me ever deeper into His grace, His love, His presence, and His glory.
It is a place of the deepest abiding - that place of knowing and being known by the one who formed you in your mother’s wombs. Who knows every thought you think before you form it in your mind. He knows the life you’ll live, the path you’ll take and the way you’ll wander off from Him along the way - and still - He chose you to bear not only His image, but also His glory as He transforms you - from glory to glory - and allows us to be partakers of His divine nature even as we are yet sinners. Christ died for us - it is a severe kind of mercy that sacrifices itself so it can attain one so loved. And beloved, if you did not already know - YOU ARE SO VERY LOVED. Let God tend those matters in your heart.
Paul’s Past…
Verse 4-6: It’s true that I once relied on all that I had become. I had a reason to boast and impress people with my accomplishments—more than others—for my pedigree was impeccable. I was born a true Hebrew of the heritage of Israel as the son of a Jewish man from the tribe of Benjamin. I was circumcised eight days after my birth and was raised in the strict tradition of Orthodox Judaism, living a separated and devout life as a Pharisee. And concerning the righteousness of the Torah, no one surpassed me; I was without a peer. Furthermore, as a fiery defender of the truth, I persecuted the messianic believers with religious zeal.
Here Paul deals honestly with both his virtues and his shortcomings… Paul gives us a glimpse at how destructive religious piety can be when it attacks and persecutes those who believe in Christ. Has your heart been wounded by leaders in the church, or maybe even your parents, misappropriated their authority over you and wounded your soul whether the wounding was intentional or not - it needs to be brought to Jesus, tenderly cut away so that healing can take place.
Verse 7: Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord!
There is this beautiful thing that takes place when you come to terms with the fact that IN CHRIST you can do nothing of your own accord. You cannot boast of your accomplishments for they are also His. You cannot even point to your past successes for they are buried now with your old life. No… As one who is accepted in the beloved you gladly join yourself to Him, allow Him to receive your glory which He gladly shares with you. He honors you beloved and He delights to see you bring honor and glory to His own name. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (See Psalm 37:4)
Verse 8: To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now, so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embrace him as Lord in all of his greatness.
Jesus when He arrests our hearts and minds - He changes everything. He gives us strength, grace and peace to walk through our lives… Not striving to accomplish something that earns us favor, but living from His love and favor as we surrender every part of ourselves to Him. For Him. And His glory.
Verse 9-11: My passion is to be consumed with him and not clinging to my own “righteousness” based in keeping the written Law. My “righteousness” will be his, based on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ—the very righteousness that comes from God. And I continually long to know the wonders of Jesus more fully and to experience the overflowing power of his resurrection working in me. I will be one with him in his sufferings and I will be one with him in his death. Only then will I be able to experience complete oneness with him in his resurrection from the realm of death.
What are you passionately pursuing in life?
For me, as Paul writes, I find myself more and more driven to know and experience the fullness of Who Jesus is - the wonders of His power and supernatural presence - the glorious fruit of His Spirit - Holy Spirit - living on the inside of me. I want to be acquainted with Him in every way - familiar and yet still in awe of His complete otherness. His complete Godness. That thing that drives my face to the ground in worship and awe that one so magnificent could love so well one like me.
Verse 12: I admit that I haven’t yet acquired the absolute fullness that I’m pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ has called me to fulfill and wants me to discover.
For those of you thinking - I have so NOT arrived. We can thank God for Paul’s testimony - and I’ll add my own. I will not know the completion of my desire, the fullness of them this side of Heaven - but in the fullness that He offers me daily - I want to live and move and find my being over and over again. Amen?
Verse 13: I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead.
Learning from our past and the missteps we’ve taken through life is valuable as we walk through them, but to live our lives driven by them and focused on them keeps our eyes off the promise. Jesus - He said, Seek First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness… All of these things are found in the person of Jesus Christ, and the empowering nature of Holy Spirit. We are not victims of circumstance doomed to repeat the past failures we have walked through - no, we are not. We are repented sinners, now called saints who walk in the pure victory of Christ as OVERCOMERS.
We cannot depend on what we view as strengths or even our own ideas. We must pursue the higher thoughts, purpose and plans of God. His strength perfected in our weakness as we learn all the wondrous ways He fashioned us to express His glory and person to the world in Christ.
In coaching one of the things we are taught is that we do not dwell on the past - if it comes up we look at it to see what we can learn from it, and then we set ourselves in purpose-filled fashion on a course of action to accomplish what we are looking toward our future to see. Paul said he forgets the past that is behind him and fastens his heart to the future instead.
So let me ask you--- What is Your Heart Fastened to in this Season?
Verse 14: I run straight for the divine invitation of reaching the heavenly goal and gaining the victory-prize through the anointing of Jesus.
There is so much more for us in Christ if we will run straight to Him and His divine invitation. What heavenly goal do you sense Him putting before you today? Run with everything you have beloved toward that victory-prize and let His anointing carry you easily across His finish line.
Verse 15-16: So let all who are fully mature have this same passion, and if anyone is not yet gripped by these desires, God will reveal it to them. And let us all advance together to reach this victory-prize, following one path with one passion.
Have you every heard the saying, “Not my monkey, not my circus?” or perhaps the more common, “Stay in your lane.” Paul is writing just this to the church at Philippi. He says let all who are fully mature have this same passion. What passion? The passion to pursue the fullness of Christ and what He has set before us to run toward in our lives each day. And then he offers grace to those who are “not quite there yet…”
I had such Zeal when I finally began to pursue the Lord and His goodness. I dug deep in His Word and I studied long. As I did, I found myself frustrated and even infuriated with people who didn’t quite “GET HIM” they way I did. I shared these thoughts with my cousin who is 10 years my senior and about the same distance from me in wisdom. She smiled and said, “You know what drives me crazy?”
I shook my head.
“People who always think you have to GET IT the way they do.”
Touche! Write. Or maybe it is a little more like ouch. God reminds me often that it is okay others are not quite where I am in my journey with Him. He’s got them - He’s working in and through them just as He has done with me. I need to trust Him in the lives of others the way I have learned to trust Him with myself. When I try to “fix” others on His behalf - it usually ends poorly and there is a always relational reconciliation that needs to be done.
Verse 17: My beloved friends, imitate my walk with God and follow all those who walk according to the way of life we modeled before you.
Here is where Paul says, Follow me - or imitate me - as I imitate Christ. You see Paul followed Christ’s lead, so it would be safe for others to follow Paul. Why? Because Paul was leading them to Jesus. If you are called to leadership this is an important note:
I cut my teeth in God’s word through Beth Moore Bible studies more than ten years ago. One thing she said back then in her video teaching that has never left me was, “Beloved, follow me as I follow Christ. Don’t just follow me because I’ll leave you in a ditch.” She then said, “Be the kind of leader that when your time is done, you move out of the way and those who followed you still follow Christ.” This is what I desire for all of you - follow Jesus. Live and Breath Him. Immerse Yourself In Him. He is the only one worthy of your devotion and your loyal faithfulness. He is everything. Every. Thing.
Verses 18-19: For there are many who live by different standards. As I’ve warned you many times (I weep as I write these words), they are enemies of the cross of the Anointed One and doom awaits them. Their god has possessed them and made them mute. Their boast is in their shameful lifestyles and their minds are in the dirt.
As one who has walked with many on life’s road with Jesus, I can relate to Paul’s words here in the deeper places of my heart. We cannot say we follow Jesus and yet fail to live by His standards. We don’t want to find ourselves opposing the truth and work of Christ after we’ve spent our lives coming to find Him. Be cautious and mindful - bathe yourself in the Scriptures and write them on your heart. Know them inside and out - and live by Faith in the One who Saved you. He alone is worthy, beloved. He is our author and perfector. He knows how the story ends. Stay close to Him - He will never fail you.
Verses 20-21: But we are a colony of heaven on earth as we cling tightly to our life-giver, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our humble bodies and transfigure us into the identical likeness of his glorified body. And using his matchless power, he continually subdues everything to himself.
The sweet spot for those of us who are in Christ is in this exactly poignant and beautiful expression of how we are to live out our days on earth - defined by our submission, clinging to Jesus as our life-giver and daily walking out the transformation that will result in us beholding Him on that glorious last day as we look in His beautiful face. He will subdue everything in His timing and He brings it continually to Him. He is matchless in every way.
Closing Remarks
That’s all the time we have for today! Thank you for tuning in with us. I pray this is some encouragement to you as you seek to set your heart in a posture of love through turbulent days that are warring for our hearts and minds. May His power, wisdom and presence be complete in you and may you walk in His steadfast love daily. Next week we’ll dig deeper into this idea of Moving Forward in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I’m very excited to announce that Blooming Inspired Network is sharing a new office space with Michelle Bentham’s Coaching Practice in Granbury, TX! If you’d like to learn more about mentoring through Blooming Inspired Network or sign up for coaching please reach out to Michelle by email and she will send you all the information you need to get started.
OCTOBER is upon us… WOW! We’re already half way through and that means there are approximately 75 days left in 2020!!! Our fall Bible study has been delayed but we’ll be making announcements for a November start reading our last book in #TheGospels #VerseByVerse! I have excellent news… We’ll be meeting in person again this fall. I’ve got a few details to iron out before making the announcement but I cannot wait to get connected with you all again in Bible Study and community!
If you’d like to be a guest on this show or get more information about hosting your own podcast on the Blooming Inspired Podcast Network - please reach out to me by visiting bloominginspirednetwork.com and click the podcast link at the top of the page or [email protected]. I’d love the opportunity to connect with you and figure out how we can share your voice with the world around us.
If you need encouragement of any kind, prayer or would just like to stay connected with us here at Blooming Inspired Network, please reach out by visiting us on Facebook, @BloomingInspired or bloominginspirednetwork.com and click the Direct Message or Contact link at the top of the page. We’d love to join hands with you in this season and lift you up.
If you’d like to get this podcast delivered to your smart device, we're available on both Apple and Google Podcasts - take a moment to Subscribe and leave a review today!
I also want to ask you if this podcast has been a blessing to you: would you consider subscribing to it on Apple or Google Podcasts, and share it with your friends and family? We’d love to partner with you in sharing messages that encourage and inspire other women to live their lives blooming alive!
Speaking of partnering… Blooming Inspired Network is working with an up and coming ministry called Women of Verve. I began a little more than a year ago to walk with my friend, Melissa, as she birthed this idea of doing a community based outreach to women through retreats and Bible studies. In June we hosted 24 women and 4 leaders for a life-changing weekend away at MO Ranch in Hunt, TX. As we did the community of women we served has ralled! We are meeting in early November for a Brunch and time of fellowship with some light teaching. Be Sure to Follow @WomenOfVerve on Facebook or you can learn more by looking us up at facebook.com/WomenOfVerve and if you’d like to join us for our 2021 retreat July 23-25th you may visit womenofverve.com for more information and to reserve your spot! Space is limited so sign up today!
Mark Your Calendars
Be sure to tune into our Network’s weekly shows featuring these women who are living their lives Blooming Alive!
Wednesdays | Jennifer Eikenhorst is bringing hope and building community with Accidental Hope Podcast. You can learn more about Jennifer and Accidental Hope by visiting facebook.com/accidentalhope.
Thursdays | Beverly Flanagan is helping us age wisely and live well as mature women of God on In All Seasons Podcast. You can find Beverly’s latest episode at facebook.com/BloomingInspired or by visiting bloominginspirednetwork.com and click the podcast link at the top of the page.
And, Of Course, our very own Michelle Bentham is empowering the voices of women who live their lives blooming alive right here on the Blooming Inspired Podcast.
Bible Study starts in October! We’ll be reading with fresh perspective in the Gospel of John as we wrap up our four year journey walking through #TheGospels #VerseByVerse. Be listening for more information here and be sure to check out facebook.com/bloominginspired for regular updates.
Thank you for listening to the Blooming Inspired Podcast on the Blooming Inspired Podcast Network. This show airs weekly on Fridays. Please take a moment to like, share and subscribe to this podcast. To learn more about this podcast and it’s network, or the ministries of Blooming Inspired Network please visit BloomingInspiredNetwork.com and click the podcast link at the top of the page.
Podcast music provided by standard license from premiumbeats.com, “Spirit of Fire” created by FASSound.
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Blooming Inspired NetworkBy Michelle Bentham

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