02 Jan 2010, Posted by spittingimage in General, No Comments.

Running the Race

Running The Race

God Disciplines His Sons

Hebrews 12: ¹Therefore, since we are
surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance
the race marked out for us. ²Let us fix our eyes on
Jesus, the author and Perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the
throne of God. ³Consider him who endured such opposition
from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Galatians 5:7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and
kept you from obeying the truth?

2 Timothy 2:4 No one serving as a
soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding
officer.

To
build on Lance’s last post, let’s take a look, for an instant, of where we have
been and where we want to go. I think
about the parable of the seed that Jesus told his disciples and other witnesses
to the Truth. The point of the Parable,
to this post, is where you are getting your strength and training from. The point being that there is a beginning and
an ending and that we have to be prepared to finish the race strong. Lance made a point that he had to raise the
bar in his life as a runner and as a husband and father, by surrounding himself
with others, who raised the bar from mediocrity to the elite. Not all of us can go out and consistently run
a 5:30 minute mile for one mile, let alone 8 miles straight. However, with a lot of encouragement and
training from his friends, Lance was able to meet that goal and looking back,
realized that it was all the more sweeter.

Today
is the second day of January in the year 2010.
Many of us may find ourselves frustrated with our lives (our marriages,
our parenting, our work, and our serving others) and may desire to do
more. As a new Christian we jumped out
of the starting blocks and read our bibles daily and got involved at church and
for some may have joined a mini-church or men’s group, BUT then it happened, we
slipped back into that hidden sin of ours and that laziness and we are no
longer able to compete the way that we started.
I like what Galatians says in that who cut in on us and took away the
truth from our lives. It is never too
late to pick up the Word and start training again. We can open up the very book that will read
our lives to the core and convict us of that which we have to let go and to
move closer to God. We can pray and ask
the Holy Spirit to guide us in our race.
We are all in this race, called life, and it is not a sprint, nor is it
a quick jaunt around the race track, but it is a marathon race. We need to stay fit (biblically and
physically speaking). We need to sharpen
our senses and prepare for battle. We
need to have accountability in our life (free accountability software) and we
need to be honest with God and with our wives (lives for some who are not
married) and to start the training process all over again.

Do
you want to be elite? Do you want a
purpose driven life? Do you want to step
out of mediocrity and into the elite? That is, do you want to be a disciple for
Christ? A soldier in the ultimate battle
for lives, this is war and this is for keeps?
Are you ready? Are you
prepared? What is it going to take to
get you off your seats and instead of being a pew sitter, you can become a
heavy hitter in the Kingdom of God.