Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me

 Good morning. And why do we have this righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith? That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. You cannot know Jesus without it. One day we will experience the power of His resurrection. Of course we may not be too eager to participate in the fellowship of His sufferings. We cannot know the power of His resurrection unless we are conformed to His death. Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. I don't know if they are still around, but there was a group called the manifested sons of God. They were supposedly a special group of believers who were being perfected. They were the ones that were going to be raptured, receive their resurrected bodies, come back to earth, and chase all the demons into hell. Some of them even believed that they were in the process of receiving their perfected body while here on earth. Thankfully God protected me from them when I first received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Anytime a group says they are special, watch out! Then Paul says: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Don't look where you have been or what you have been through – keep looking forward: keep your eyes on the prize! Father thank You that the reader knows Jesus and the power of His resurrection. That power continually works within him/her to achieve all of the goals that You have for him/her.