Running the Race

I'm not personally a big follower of sports. You won't find me at a racetrack or a ball game. However, being a man, I talk to other men who most often are greatly concerned with following whatever sports are currently in season. However, whether you follow sports or not, there is one competition in which we all should be participating.

Hebrews 12:1-2 presents a challenge to us as Christians. Are we really being competitive in our Christian life? Or are we carrying around weights and sins? Do we keep stopping on the side of the track because we have so much baggage that we're ineffective runners? The Bible here lets us know that people are watching us, and we need to keep running. It says we need to throw off everything that hinders; throwing off just most of the stuff that hinders us but hanging on to part of it for ourselves isn't enough. We also need to throw off the sin that so easily entangles us. We get so tangled up in some insignificant thing in our life, and forget that we're in a race.

This is such a great analogy; you never see a race where one of the runners just suddenly forgets that they're racing. You see some runners get tired and quit. You see runners trip, stumble, and fall. You see ball players get tackled, pummeled, and injured. Most of them get back up and keep trying; pushing their bruised and tired bodies to the limit for the win.

Hebrews 12:3 goes on to say "Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." If we see Jesus, and we study His life, we see that he endured far worse than what we're going through, and He's promised He'll be here for us. When we keep our eyes on Jesus, He'll keep His hand on our lives, and we'll not give up and quit. If we turn and look at the things around us, we'll keep stumbling on the track. If we watch how other people are running, we're going to get disgruntled, and give up. Let's keep our eyes on Jesus and run our race.

More verses:
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Philippians 3:14-15