KEYS TO THE CHURCH?
At a former church, the young graduate of Seminary, started his job as an associate pastor. He was given a set of keys to the church by one of the Trustees, Bill. Bill told me, "Peter, these are not all the keys to the church, we are only giving you four keys: One key to the church building, one key to your office, one key the church office, and one key the Sunday school classrooms. If you need to get into other rooms, you will find the rest of the keys in the top drawer in the church office."
Well, for some time those four keys were all he needed, but one day he needed to get into several other rooms. So, he went into the church office, looked in the top drawer, and there sat this enormous ring of keys to the church, exactly as Bill had said. I said out loud, "This is crazy, anyone could find these keys and then get into any room in this church." Our church secretary laughed...and kept on working.
First, he went to the pantry and after searching through the keys for quite some time, he finally found the key labeled pantry on the key ring. There must have been 75 keys on this ring, so it took a while to find the right key. He inserted the key into the lock on the door, it didn’t work. He attempted to open the door for several minutes - nothing.
So, he moved on to the shed behind the church. After several minutes he found the key marked shed. He inserted the key - nothing. After several minutes of working the lock, he had no success. He tried the choir room, the youth room and one of the storage rooms, but not a single key worked.
Frustrated, he went back into the church office and told our church secretary that none of the keys worked. She just laughed and said, "Talk to Luis." Luis was our sexton and oversaw all the cleaning and maintenance in the church.
He found Luis and told him about my frustration with the keys. Luis said, "Peter, all the keys work just fine, you just have to memorize what key fits what lock."
You see, all the keys were mislabeled. The key labeled pantry would never work on the pantry, the key labeled pantry was for the dumpster; The dumpster key was for the soundboard; the soundboard key was for electrical room #3; The key to the pastor’s office was to the water heater closet in building #4 and so on. There were about 15 working keys, all mislabeled, and the rest of the keys didn’t go to anything, they were just useless decoys.
Luis taught me the system of how the keys were organized. Once I got the label/key secret code down it was easy. Luis had created this intricate key system so that only those who knew the key system would find the keys useful, all others would be locked out.
The fact is, He not only needed the keys to the church, but I also needed to know the person who created the keys to make the keys useful. For the person who made the keys could teach me how to use the keys.
Having a key in your hand is useless, unless you know how to use that, key.

Philippians 3:12-14 (NIV)

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.

1. ASSESS (vs. 13a) – I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it

Paul says here that he has not arrived yet. To me, that's an amazing statement. Paul is an old man now. If anybody had the right to claim he had arrived, it would be Paul. He wrote most of the New Testament. He helped spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. He made an incredible impact on the world. Yet Paul, at the end of his life, says "I don't have it all together. I haven't arrived. I'm not perfect. I'm still growing."

God has done some wonderful things through this church in the last 50 years. Part of celebration is evaluation. Anniversaries are great moments to look back, but we need to be careful with nostalgia. Someone once said that “nostalgia is the sandpaper that smooth’s the edges of the good old days”. Over time we tend to forget the hardships and remember only the blessings.

Paul could have taken great pride in what he had already been able to accomplish. Instead, we see that he was not content and was still striving for more. I think it is important to remember that. We have been so blessed as a church in the last 50 years, but we still have a long way to go. God is not done with us yet. We have not arrived. We are still growing.

2. ELIMINATE (vs. 13b) – But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind

This is our golden anniversary. We have spent time this morning remembering. So why am I now using a scripture that talks about forgetting what is behind? While it is important to learn from the past you cannot live there. To move forward involves 2 things.

a. Forget your Failures

PAST, overcoming
I wish there were some wonderful place called the Land of New Beginnings.
Where all our past mistakes and heartaches,
All our poor selfish grief, and Bad Decisions,
Could be dropped like a ragged old coat at the door,
And never be put on again.

Don’t rehearse things in your heart that God has long since forgiven and forgotten. Satan's favorite desire is to paralyze us with the past, to manipulate us with the memories. Paul says, "I learn to forget the past." Do not sit around beating yourself up for mistakes. Everybody here has blown it. We as a church have blown it in the past. There are things we are not proud of. I apologize if you were hurt.

Paul, of all people, probably had many regrets that could have haunted him. He was a persecutor of the church. He hounded people who were believers and had them locked up and stoned. Nothing you ever do will change your past. It is gone, over, dead. Since you can’t change it, let it go. Learn from it but then let it go.

b. Forget your Successes

Just like failure, you can learn from success, but you can’t live in them. It is easy to rest on your laurels. Sometimes we try to live in the past and base our security on past performance. The “good old days” are gone. Let them go. Success tends to make you complacent and fills you with pride. Then you stop growing and learning and then you're going to fail.

Over 2,000 years ago a young Greek artist named Timanthes studied under a respected tutor. After several years the teacher’s efforts seemed to have paid off when Timanthes painted a beautiful work of art. Unfortunately, he became so captivated with the painting that he spent days gazing at it. One morning when he arrived to admire his work, he was shocked to find it blotted out with paint. Angry, Timanthes ran to his teacher, who admitted he had destroyed the painting. ‘I did it for your own good. That painting was retarding your progress. Start again and see if you can do better.’ Timanthes took his teacher’s advice and produced Sacrifice of Iphigenia, which is regarded as one of the finest paintings of antiquity.

Today we may celebrate our past, but we cannot live in the past. You can't run a race looking backwards. You've got to focus ahead.

3. DETERMINATION (vs. 13c) – straining towards what is ahead I press on toward the goal

The word PRESS ON is the Greek word DI-O-KO which means to run swiftly. It is the same word as persecution. Before Jesus Paul would persecute or DI-O-KO the church – chase after them with all his might. Now Paul is chasing after Christ. The intensity was the same, the direction was different.

As we look to the future, I pray that we would have the same determination that those who went before us had. We need to have the same daring faith that Stu Sylvester had when the church bought this land and built this building. We need to be ready to try new things and let old things go.

Romans 7:15-24 (NIV)
15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year.
If you are going down the path of REPEAT, stop, do not take another step. Get some directions to where you want to be and start moving toward the NEW CREATION IN GOD.

We Cannot do this by ourselves, we need JESUS

“The Adversary wants to make your problem, your dungeon. The Holy Ghost wants to make your problem a Pathway to your Deliverance. Thank God for my Troubles! Thank God for stuff I can’t Fix! Why? It’s going to push me toward somebody that can Fix it!” - Jeff Arnold

Mark 10:27 (KJV) And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

You might be able to Assess, Eliminate, Determine to succeed, but without Jesus Christ in your heart you will never “move Pass the Past.”

Philippians 3:17-21 (NIV) 17 Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

• Woman at the Well
• Ten Lepers
• Return to God and get what you need to win

Ezra 10:4 “Rise up…take courage and do it.”