Welcome to the Feminite Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Still here. Thanks for joining me today.

This podcast I'm just going to call pressing. This is the word we're going to look at today.

Pressing. I bet many of you attended graduation or maybe more than one. This is the word we're going to look at today, pressing.

I bet many of you attended graduation or maybe more than once sometime during this past month or soon,

whether it was kindergarten or for college or grad school or high school or whether you were in a homeschool or Christian school graduation, all the different kinds.

And no doubt you heard some inspirational speeches. I certainly did. But my point here is to talk about how a graduation ceremony can really apply to all of us, not just the graduates.

The Christian life is in so many ways a series of graduations. You made it

through one stage, and now you're on to the next one. It's a gradual climb, not a descent, all the way

to the finish line. And when you reach one goal, of course, it's satisfying to look back and see how far you come,

but that can only be a glance. You've got to keep your eye forward and moving on.

It's certainly not about drifting from one graduation to the next.

School presents plenty of checkpoints and finish lines,

whether pushing on toward first grade or grad school, but what if you're not in school anymore?

Whether just for the summer or permanently, what's the goal now?

We all have the same goal as the Apostle Paul did.

He said, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God

in Christ Jesus. Paul is pressing. He's not drifting. He has a specific goal, an upward

call, and this requires exertion. A bench press is what we call lying on your back and lifting weights up

over your head. Though I've never done this myself, I can see why it is called

a press. It is working against gravity, and it requires strength and concentration and

endurance. Backing up a couple of verses, Paul says, not that I have already attained or am

already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that

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