There is a cost to being a follower of Jesus Christ. It costs us our lives; it costs us our ‘everything’ as we lay them down.

So Many Races

It seems to me that so many of us are on a treadmill. Is that pessimistic? I hope not! It just seems to me that this world is more and more about running a race; winning the prize. Not just the elite athletes; the Olympians, although in that arena it’s a definitely a ‘winner takes all’ mentality.

A split second difference is the difference between millions of dollars of endorsements and complete obscurity. This ‘winner takes all’ mentality actually translates itself into our own lives as well. We want to win at all sorts of things these days; having the smartest and the brightest kids. These days at least in the affluent West, people are now paying, not only big dollars to send their kids to private schools but on top of that they are paying money for expensive tutors.

I don’t know – I attended a Government school; no tutors and I managed pretty well. But these days it’s more competitive – there is more pressure to win. Political races – as an Australian peering in on the U.S. Presidential race every four years – I mean how much did Barak Obama raise for his campaign – around a billion dollars U.S. – all to win? It seems that whether it’s pure survival or the excesses of wealthy societies, life is all about running hard and winning.

Now I was brought up in a post war European work ethic so I’m the last one to criticise hard work, actually I believe in applying ourselves and working hard. But there is an ugly side to that; there is a side where people pour out their lives to win a prize but the question is: is the prize worth winning? The goal that we have been programmed to go so hard after – when we stop, look, think in the cold hard light of day – you have got to ask – is this a race worth winning? Well, is it?

This week on the programme we are starting a new series that I’ve called “Running the Race, Winning the Prize.” Because actually part of believing in God is in fact, running the race and winning the prize. The question though, that we each need to ask ourselves – and that’s what today is all about – is ‘Am I actually on the right track? Am I running in the right race?’

So often the world has just programmed us to run in this one particular race or rut – the career we have chosen, making lots of money….whatever it happens to be, we are running in that race – giving it our all, slogging hard, working hard but let me ask you this again. Stand back, take a hard look – is it the right race? Is it worth it?

Now how do you answer that question? How do you assess whether this is the right race; whether it is worth it? Well you look at the prize at the end – what is the prize? What do I get? What do I end up with? And given what I want out of life; given what my hopes and dreams and plans are, is the sacrifice that I am making for this race justified by the prize?

I don’t think we like to ask ourselves that too much, because we are addicted to the race we are running at the moment. We have been programmed to believe that this is the race and if we don’t win this race then we have failed. We have been duped into thinking that the prize is worth it even when sometimes it’s not.

You wouldn’t believe the number of business men – I am deliberately talking about men now – who believe that if they really, really, really work hard while they are young they will be able to retire in their mid forties and live a life of luxury but the reality is that most of them don’t. Many of them lose their marriages and miss out on their kids growing up. Many of them have high blood pressure and they’re overweight and they end up have a stroke or a heart attack in their fifties while they are still working like idiots.

You see how easy it is to end up running the wrong race – to pour our lives out for a prize that, as the end of the day, well, it just ain’t worth it. And then we behave as though it all depends on us but then the stock market crashes and all that wealth that has been generated by so many busy, hard working people, is wiped off the ledger in a matter of days; minutes even. Or war breaks out or oil prices plummet or sickness strikes or…..come on, we put our faith in the works of our hands as though there are no tomorrows; though it’s all up to us – but life just isn’t like that.

King Solomon, one of the wisest men that ever walked the earth, towards the end of his life, listen to what he writes – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up at Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, chapter 9, we are looking at verse 11. Here’s what he writes:

“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the bread to the wise, nor the riches to the intelligent, nor the favour to the skilful; but time and chance happen to all of them. For no one can anticipate the time of a disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.”

It’s true, isn’t it? Things come along out of the blue and we think that if we are swift and strong and wise and intelligent and skilful, that’s it; that’s everything; that’s all there is. But you know and I know that that’s only part of the equation.

Please don’t get me wrong again – I am a great believer in taking the gifts and abilities that God’s given each one of us and applying them diligently and working hard, running the race but the question I come back to is: which race? The race that the world has told us we should be running? Or a different race; a better race; a race that isn’t just the most amazing blessing here and now but a race that brings an eternal prize?

That’s what the Apostle Paul is talking about when he writes this, in First Corinthians chapter 9, beginning at verse 24:

“Do you not know that in a race, the runners all compete but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it! Athletes exercise self-control in all things – they do it to receive a perishable wreath but we, an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor to I box as though beating the air but I punish my body and enslave it so that after proclaiming to others, I myself should not be disqualified.”

See, Paul is making a very clear distinction here between the race that the athletes run, the race that this world runs, for a perishable prize and the race that he is running for an imperishable prize. And Paul is so focussed on that race – he’s like an athlete; he’s like a boxer who hits his target – he’s focussed but on the right race.

So let me ask you something – which race are you running in? Is it the right one?

Delusion and Delay

I believe that you and I, we can be masters of delusion and delay. I know I can be. For years I ploughed along on a track that I was on – wealth and career – convinced, absolutely convinced I was on the right track, and yet, always knowing that I wasn’t. How did I know deep down that I wasn’t? Because there was no satisfaction; there was no joy; there was no real sense of peace about it.

But as so many people do, I ignored those; I rationalised them, I hid them, I pushed them down and away. I had to be on the right track….I just had to be. I had invested so much of myself building a career and a big house, it had to be right. But it wasn’t and every now and then God would send someone along to tell me that. But I had to ignore them….I just had to.

There was a time when the Apostle Paul was arrested for telling people about Jesus. He was taken before the Governor, Governor Felix of Caesarea. Have a listen to this short passage – it’s a record of what happens. It begins in Acts chapter 24, verse 22 – so if you have a Bible, come here with me – Acts chapter 24, verse 22:

“But Felix, who was rather well informed about the Way, adjourned the hearing with the comment, “When Lysias, the tribune comes down, I will decide your case.” Then he ordered the centurion to keep him in custody, but to let him have some liberty and not to prevent any of his friends from taking care of his needs.

“Some days later when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul again and heard him speaking concerning faith in Jesus Christ. And as he discussed justice, self-control, and the coming judgement, Felix became frightened and said, “Go away for the present; when I have an opportunity, I will send for you.” At the same time he hoped that money would be given him by Paul, and for that reason he used to send for him very often and to converse with him.

“After two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus; and since he wanted to grant the Jews favour, Felix left Paul in prison.”

Well, this tells us a bit about Felix, the Governor, who was judging Paul. He was well informed about the Way, which means he was well informed about Jesus because his wife was Jewish. He knew the whole ‘Jesus’ thing; he knew what it was about. And Paul was a prisoner for proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Now Felix wasn’t particularly ‘anti’ him – he was happy to give Paul some liberties; he was happy for Paul’s friends to come and take care of his needs – so Felix wasn’t really persecuting Paul; he wasn’t against the Gospel. He knew about Jesus but what he found was that the stuff that Paul was talking about was scary.

And as Paul discussed justice, self-control and the coming judgement, we read in verse 25, “Felix became frightened and said, “Go away for the present. When I have an opportunity, I will send for you.” And of course Felix did send for Paul, but he sent for him for the wrong reasons. Felix sent for Paul to maybe get a bribe out of him, not to hear about Jesus.

Aren’t you and I so often like Felix? We kind of know that God is God. Not particular anti; maybe lukewarm; maybe positive, is a good description; maybe half baked. Ever drunk a lukewarm cup of coffee – you want to spit it out, right? Ever eaten a half baked cake – it’s all sloppy and doughy – it’s not what it’s meant to be?

That’s where Felix was! What was he frightened of? Why did he send Paul away? Because Paul was talking about justice, self-control and coming judgement! Now justice is something that Governor Felix should have been dispensing. Self-control, well, you know Felix was a Governor; he could have pretty much whatever he wanted. And the coming judgement – the day when God would judge the living and the dead; when there is a price to pay. WOW! What Paul was talking about, was telling Felix in his heart of hearts, that he was on the wrong track and to change tracks.

Well, there was a price to pay. Some sacrifices had to be made – he was counting the cost; that’s what Felix was doing. Felix heard the Good News of Jesus Christ; he heard the hard edge about justice and self-control and the coming judgement and he counted the cost. Jesus said in Luke chapter 14, verse 27:

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost to see whether he has enough to complete it?”

And that’s what we do so often. We are so committed to the track we are on; the race we are in, when someone challenges us to take another look; when someone like Paul comes and talks to Felix; when something or someone pricks our conscience, we react like Felix. It’s uncomfortable, we push it away, we deny it, we delay it.

Two years Paul was in that prison – Felix spoke to him often. He had the opportunity to get what Paul was saying and to wrap his heart around it and to put his life on a new track but he didn’t because he didn’t want to pay the price. He counted the cost, okay, and he decided, ‘No, I don’t want to pay that price. Not worth it to me.’ Haven’t you done that; haven’t I done that?

Following Jesus is about taking up our cross; it’s about sacrifice; it’s about giving up some things; maybe even giving up wealth or at least our obsession with it. And so we decide not to change races; not to change tracks; stick with the current race. Better the devil you know, right? Ain’t that the truth! But here’s where we get it wrong. We only count the cost of the change – we only count the cost of actually laying down our lives for Jesus.

What we don’t count the cost of is keeping on with the current race; the race that we know isn’t right for us; the obsession with wealth or career or family. Nothing wrong with any of those things in themselves – they are all good but they have become our masters and we are their slaves and there is a cost to that. We don’t count it because we are so used to it, we ignore it and we deny it and we rationalise it. ‘Oh, look, it’s just a dull ache or a nagging sense of something – can’t quite put my finger on it – I’ll get over it.’

We don’t count that cost because we have nothing to compare it to. But if we were to sit in the middle of a full life of abundant joy with Jesus and look back on that old life, well you could see the cost of that old life a whole bunch more clearly.

When we get into the race that God’s got planned for us – and we are going to talk about that more next week on the programme – all of a sudden we see that the fine clothes that we once boasted in, well, we see that they are just dirty, torn rags.

Who is Lord?

The delusion I laboured under for much of my life is that if I ran my own race I was free but if I accepted Jesus as my Saviour and Lord, well, then someone else would be the Lord of my life and I would no longer be free. I mean, I had money; I had a career and to have Jesus, I had to give them up – at least that’s what I thought. But that’s not how it works!
Have a listen to how Jesus puts it in Matthew chapter 6, verse 24. He says:

“No one can serve two masters. For a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Now to be sure, a few times Jesus tells people to sell their possessions and give them to the poor because He is challenging them as to who is in charge.

But the point He is making here is that we are going to be slaves to something. Some people are slaves to their reputation – they tie themselves in knots to live out that reputation. Some people are slaves to their beauty or to their wealth, some to their families and in a sense that is good but so many parents in the West, they pamper their children and in doing so, end up ruining their lives.

Let me ask you this! Who or what are you a slave to? Just stop and think – list all the major things in your life; the things you really care about – maybe even jot them down. Perhaps there are three, four, five things that really matter. Now the next bit is to say, ‘Well, what are those things costing me? What’s the price that I’m paying?’ Now, be honest! Let’s not be like Felix – let’s not put it off and delude ourselves. Let’s get out of this delusion and delay and denial game. What’s it costing and is the prize worth it?

When you’re eighty and your teeth are in a jar on the bedside table and the skin is all wrinkled and the kids have all gone their own way and there is more of your life on this earth to look back on than there is to look forward to – when you are in that place, what will the prizes of those things on your list be worth? And will the cost, the price, the sacrifices along the way have been worth it? Are you running the right race?

See, the Apostle Paul changed tracks. He was a ‘somebody’ – he was a Jewish leader in the Sanhedrin and he had a name and he had a religious career carved out for himself. In fact, he writes about it – if you have a Bible again, come with me and look at in Philippians chapter 3, beginning at verse 4:

“I too, have reason for confident in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

“Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”

Here’s a man who’s counted the cost – his career, his benefits on one side of the ledger and on the other side, the wonder of living his life for Jesus, having lost all of those things. And Paul suffered – have a listen to what he writes in his letter to the Romans in chapter 8, verse 18. He says: “I’ve considered that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

He was a Pharisee, he was working so hard at his religion but at the end of the day he counts all those things as zero, compared to the saving grace of God, as rubbish. In fact, literally, as dung, is what he says. Now, Paul worked hard, he poured his life out for Jesus, he suffered, he was jailed, eventually he was executed but in his heart, the light of God was shining and that was worth everything to him.

Not some sugar coated candy kind of faith – there is a cost to being a follower of Jesus Christ. It costs us our lives; it costs us our ‘everything’ as we lay them down. I can’t talk with you about Jesus the Saviour, without talking about Jesus the Lord – two sides of the one coin.

We are going to slaves to something or someone in our lives – we are! And ultimately I decided I was going to be a slave and run in a race and pay a price for a goal and a prize that was worth it. Listen to what Peter, the Apostle writes in First Peter chapter 1, verse 8:

“Although you have not seen Him you have loved Him and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Peter is talking about a joy unspeakable; a joy so wonderful that no words can describe it. And the difference…..the difference is this: in Jesus I know that I am saved; I know that I have eternal life – there is a certain assurance of that. But Jesus the Lord ends up using who I am and what I have, which are, after all, who He made me and what He gave me, for His glory and not mine.

It’s so much more fun; it’s so much more fulfilling; it’s so much more everything. And instead of enjoying my life less, which is what I thought would certainly happen, I ended up enjoying my life so much more – infinitely more – beyond words. A joy unspeakable, all because one day I was put in a place where I had to think about the race I was running. I discovered in my own experience that, no, actually it wasn’t worth it and changing tracks was the most obvious thing to do.

I don’t care who we are, or where we are at; whether we have been walking with Jesus for a life time or whether we have never met a Jesus worth knowing, what we need to ask ourselves today is this: Is my life on the right track?

Stepping up to the starting line is saying “Lord, that’s for me”. And you know something, it doesn’t matter how much my body craves for comfort and safety and security, it’s your race and it it’s going to look different to mine.

An Apparent Contradiction

You know, there’s something that confused me for a while about this whole Christianity thing. Something that really took me a long time to work out. My hunch is I’m still kind of working through it.

It’s this. On the one hand those Christians tell us that it’s all about grace. No, not rules, not some God with a big stick. The guts of this Christianity thing is a deep belief that all the stuff that you and I have ever done wrong in our lives, all that stuff that you and I have ever done to turn our backs on God, it’s forgiven completely if we believe that Jesus died to pay the price for those things. Those things that God calls sin.

At least that’s the word Christians use. Fair enough. I guess I can cope with that. Takes a while to get a handle on the “fact that you don’t have to work your way into God’s favour any more. There’s no effort, there’s no work that we have to put in to be forgiven by Him. It’s simply about believing in His unmerited favour.

That’s a good thing. Most of us, we’ve been working too hard for too long in the race that we’ve been running. A bit of a rest, that’s a good thing don’t you think. We don’t have to strive any more. We don’t have to be beautiful or good or successful to be noticed by God. That is good stuff.

But then, then Christians start talking about doing good things. About changing behaviour, about being good. Makes sense I think on it’s own. But when you hold it up against that grace thing I was just talking about, it’s a glaring contradiction. I mean so many people call themselves Christians and yet they seem to be working harder at this grace race than, well, the rest of the world. It is running it’s own race.

God forgives by grace and we believe and we’re forgiven and we have a new life. Good Oh. Well why isn’t that the end of the story? And if it isn’t do I really want it? I guess what we’re just going to do today is try and figure out what it really means to put our faith in God. What it means to run this grace race. What does it mean? Does it make sense? Does it work?

Paul the apostle puts the whole grace thing, well, he puts it this way in a letter to his friends, the Ephesians. These days it’s one of the books in the New Testament. If you’ve got a bible grab it. Open it up at Ephesians Chapter 2 and verse 8. This is what he writes.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith and this isn’t your own doing, it’s a gift from God, not the result of works so that no one may boast.”

That’s a mighty thing for us to get our minds around. Most of my life, the first 36 years, I spent running away from God because in my head I believed, as I said earlier on, I thought I had a right to run my own race. And by and large I was happy in that race. No it wasn’t as satisfying as I would have liked it to be, but hey, life’s not perfect.

But in my heart I guess I always knew that there was a God and that He was loving and that one day. I was running my own race and deep down in my heart I knew, I just knew, I wasn’t good enough for God.

I knew the way I treated people and the way I behaved. I was greedy and arrogant and I wanted to win and beat everyone else at the same time. That’s what winning was for me. For me to win, it was important for me to see you lose. That was the fun of it. So it was hard. Very hard for me to come to grips with grace. It’s easy to rattle off Paul’s words now, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it’s a gift of God, not the result of works so that no one may boast”.

But being able to believe that God would be like that towards me, that He would show me His unmerited favour, that took some quite some coming to terms with. Until one day I realised – and I apologised if you have heard me say this before, but it’s so important – I realised that grace is only grace and mercy is only mercy if they’re undeserved.

See if it was something we deserve it wouldn’t be grace, it wouldn’t be mercy, it would be a right. As it is we don’t deserve it and that’s precisely it’s called grace and that’s precisely why Jesus paid the price for you and me and that’s precisely the reason why we can only have that relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Makes sense?

Well, anyhow that’s how it makes sense for me. So all my life I’d been working and working and working to succeed and for people to recognise me and reward me and finally, finally I discovered something where I can resign from this shameless self promotion thing and it’s a place of the most incredible rest. Because you don’t have to make a name for yourself, you don’t have to be someone, because when you meet Jesus you discover that you are someone already in His heart.

How do you know that? Through the price that He was prepared to pay to purchase you and me back. To set us free from that treadmill of self. That’s how you know.

You look at Jesus hanging on the cross suffering the Son of God being punished, dying for you and for me and then you know. But then I read this passage that Paul writes in the New Testament. It begins in Philippians Chapter 3 verses 10-14. Have a listen.

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death. If somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead, not that I’ve already obtained this or I’ve already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus had made me His own.
Beloved I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ.

Hang on a minute doesn’t that sound like the same old, same old again. Work, race, sacrificing, suffering. You see the conundrum. How does grace and race go together. Let’s finish that first bit that we read from the apostle Paul in Ephesians Chapter 2 verse 8-9

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it’s the gift of God not the result of works so that no one may boast.” Now look at the very next verse, verse 10. For we are what He has made us. Created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

That’s nice. It’s not only a relationship but a life with a purpose. It’s not only a faith but a life to be used of Him in a new way. A way of life that works, that works out the faith that we have in our hearts. See it’s our hearts and our hands.

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t be satisfied for too long being a spiritual couch potato. I want to do something with my faith. I want to tell people about Jesus. I want to love people. And to tell you the truth, doing those things over this last decade and a half, that’s what’s made my faith real.

We are God’s workmanship. Unique, handcrafted by Him for a purpose for some good things to do. Good works to walk into which God intends to be our new way of life. So it’s not only do we have an eternal future, but we have a future now. We have something to do with our lives. Something we can throw ourselves into. A race to run. It’s not for us it’s for God and yet it brings us the deepest sense of satisfaction. A race that’s custom made for who we are. A perfect fit between who we are and what we’re called to do.

You know I reckon it just doesn’t get any better than that.

The Grace Race

God’s race, this grace race, as I said isn’t about impressing Him. It’s about living out His plan for our lives and it is so satisfying to live for Him and not for ourselves and to live out that

Ephesians Chapter 2 verse 10. “For we are what He has made us. Created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life”. So God gives us a relationship and a purpose. A faith and a life a race to run.

Right now we are going to take a look at that very race because there are a couple of things that we need to know and to understand if we’re going to make sense of that.

The apostle Paul talks about it a few times and I’m going to go back to Phil 3 10-14.

“I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death if somehow I may attain resurrection from the dead not that I’ve already obtained this or that I’ve already reached my goal, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own.
Beloved I do not consider that I have yet made it my own, but this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

The old Paul was a focused kind of guy wasn’t He? And what he’s saying here. I think he’s saying a few things. Firstly, he has this prize. He talks about that a few times, this prize in sharp focus. He’s running for his eternal life. Yes, by faith he has it, but he’s going to live his life as though he has it. So many people say, “Oh yes, I believe in Jesus”, then they drift through life. They never do anything with it. They never have any real blessed assurance in their hearts. But they have an eternal life ahead of them.

I don’t know what your race looks like, I don’t know what has made you to do but my hunch is that you do. You know what you’re good at, you know what flicks your switch, you know what you enjoy doing and Paul is saying to us get focused on that and go and do it.

And the flip side of that coin is forgetting what lies behind. The past is like lead in our saddle bags. So many let the past ruin their present and rob them of their future.

So many people let the past ruin their present and rob them of their future.

Well, you don’t understand. I did this and I’m not that. Well, get over it, it’s time to move on. Forgetting what lies behind. You know why you can forget it. Do you believe in Jesus? Do you have faith in Him? Then you are forgiven and God’s forgotten. Psalm 103 beginning at verse 11 says this.

“For as the heavens are high above the earth so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west so far he removes our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion for his Children so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For He knows how we were made; He remember that we’re just dust”.

Do you get it? God’s forgotten. It’s time to move on. Paul persecuted the Church. He had them dragged into prison and beaten before He met Jesus. If He hadn’t forgotten his past He could never have moved on to the future that God had planned for him.

Get on with it. Come on. You are handcrafted to do some good thing that God planned before the foundation of the earth were laid Eph 2:10. Literally, to walk into the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do. We’re not going to walk into those things if we’re sitting on the couch feeling sorry for ourselves, are we? There’s a wonderful race to be run. Are you ready?

Now the second passage from Paul about this race. Have a listen. It comes from 1 Cor 9:24. He says this:

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.
So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.”

What Paul’s saying here is, I’m running with a purpose. See your body isn’t going to like it when you start running for God’s purpose. Do you think athletes like getting up at 4am in the morning and heading down to the athletics track or the swimming pool? Do you think their bodies enjoy it when they push through that pain barrier? No! But they do it anyway. They do it with a purpose. They do it to win the prize.

Paul, he approaches this race, this grace race, that God has set before him in the same way. His race was planting churches across the known world. His race was writing half the New Testament for us. That was his race. My race is doing what I’m doing now. I’m so influenced by Paul. So many times you get dejected and want to give up. So many times. But then I hear God speaking to me through Paul. Keep going. Run the race.

For me there are people who need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s why I keep going. That’s my purpose. That’s what God is calling me to do. What’s God calling you to do? To be a boxer flailing the air aimlessly or punching to hit the target. You see, back in those days there were no boxing gloves. They had hard leather with bone and metal inserts.

Paul is using brutal language here. Our body wants rest and luxury, but listen to me, God’s calling us to run a race for Him. A race for His glory. To be the person He made us to be. To run the race he planned for us before time began. And in His plan those two, the who and the do, are a perfect fit. Hand and glove. Who we are and what we are made to do.

Maybe you’ve been running God’s race and you’ve pulled over and your dejected and exhausted and you’ve given up. God is calling you today to get up and keep going.

Maybe you’ve yet to take the first step on the track that He’s prepared for you. Take the first step today. It’s exciting, its powerful, it’s invigorating. Each one of us has a race to run. Are you ready?

The Starting Line

You know, one of the most daunting things about what we’ve been looking at this week on the program it’s the sense that God does have a plan, that there is in fact a mighty race for each one of us to run but in our hearts we’re afraid. We’re afraid to step up to the starting line. Afraid to – I don’t know – take that first step.

Inertia is a basic law of physics. It’s a tendency to do nothing and remain unchanged. It’s the property of matter by which it continues in it’s existing state of rest unless that state is changed by an external force. You know that feeling. You can see what lies ahead. You know the right thing to do but you just can’t get going. You just can’t start.

What’s holding us back? Maybe it’s a sense that we haven’t been running this race. We kind of know God had planned for us all along. But we’ve left it so long that we think, well God. I’ll ignore it. I’ll hide and he won’t notice.

Maybe it’s a sense that if we start running this race for God we’ll look stupid or feel stupid or something. What will other people thing. What if I fall flat on my face. I’ll look stupid. It’s a problem for many people who believe in Jesus. It can be hard to connect our faith with our lives.

But the race won’t begin without the first step. It just won’t. You can buy the CD of this program, you can listen to it a hundred times over but nothing’s going to change unless we step up to the starting line. Unless we resolve in our hearts to take that first step. To say to ourselves you know something God, your calling me to run this race that you’ve planned for me since before time began. I know that today, God, you are calling me. Listen again to Paul:

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.
So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified”.

Stepping up to the starting line is saying Lord, that’s for me. God, you’re speaking to me through your word, and you know something, it doesn’t how much my body craves for comfort, safety and security I have a race to run and it’s God’s race. It’s a race with a purpose.

It’s your race and its different to mine. That’s OK. That’s good. That’s how it should be. And your running a race that’s hard work. It can be tiring, it will be exhausting, it will be painful, all of those things. But have a listen to how the writer of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews chapter 12 from verse 1:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider Him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart”.

See there’s a crowd of witnesses. Heaven is cheering us on. That’s the big picture, the heavenly picture. It’s time to lay down the old life, to actually shed the flab of sin that clings so closely. To Lose it. Yes, it takes time, like losing weight takes time. But that’s what’s being talked about here. Shifting our focus from that chocolate cake that we want to eat today.

You can just smell the chocolate wafting up through your nostrils. It’s called sin. It’s the thing that’s going to clog our arteries and put the weight on. I know it’s crying out “Eat Me! Eat Me”. Seductive cry in the core of our very being.

Stepping up to the mark is saying No! No, I’m going to put aside the sin that has clung so closely. I’m going to look to Jesus who kicked off my faith and who’s going to finish my faith for me.

Jesus, who for the sake of the joy set before Him endured the cross. He gave of the great career he could have had as a preacher. He laid all that down and He endured the shame of the cross for the joy that was laid before Him. And that’s the whole point.

I’m going to ask you again. Give this question for you to ask yourself. Am I ready to run this race?

Only you can answer that. But I want to encourage you, go to God today, answer the call that you’ve heard in His voice and His Word and tell Him “I am. Lord I am ready to run your race. Lord, God, I’ll run it for you”

We can’t put our trust in God and in wealth because we will end up serving one or the other, not both. We can’t be a dog with two masters – we have to choose.

Wandering off Track

I want you to imagine for a moment, that you are watching the 400 meter track and field final at the Olympic Games. It’s the final remember – they are running for gold and about a third of the way through the race one of the runners, well, gets distracted by something in the crowd – maybe it’s a pretty woman or maybe it’s the jacket that the guys wearing over there and he wanders off the track to take a look.

Meanwhile…..meanwhile all the other runners are running for their lives. But this man – he looks pretty fit to me – he was well in medal contention – he is still wandering off by the side of the track, checking out whatever it is that distracted him. The commentators can’t believe it – the crowd can’t believe it!

I know it sounds obvious but this distraction from the race, well, this guy has no chance, I mean, absolutely none, of winning the gold medal right? But if in his heart, he is somehow still expected to win, well, we’d say, ‘this guy is crazy.’ I mean, it’s obvious he can’t win the medal from here and yet so many of us……so many of us, this is how we run the most important race of all. Not an Olympic race – no, much more important than that. The race I’m referring to is the race we call ‘life’.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about this very thing – running the race of life. The Apostle Paul is an interesting guy – he is really focused. He was focused on his career as a religious leader but then….then one day he met Jesus along the road that he was walking on his way to Damascus and everything changed.

I used to think that when someone got ‘religion’ that meant they had to become some kind of airy-fairy, powder-puff kind of spiritual swami. Ha! I never wanted to become one of those so I ignored the whole ‘religion’ thing – it was for losers. The truth be known, I still don’t like ‘religion’ – I not into the bells and smells kind of thing – of jumping through hoops to please God. But like Paul, one day I met Jesus along the road that I was walking. It wasn’t the road to Damascus; we’ll call it ‘my way’.

So I really relate to Paul and I want to share with you again something that he wrote about the new race that he was running. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it up – First Corinthians chapter 9, we are beginning at verse 24. He writes:

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we, an imperishable one. So I don’t run aimlessly, nor do I box as though I am beating the air; but I punish my body and I enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.”

We observed last week, it’s kind of a weird thing for him to write. Paul spends a lot of the time, in the letters he writes in the New Testament (remember Paul wrote almost half the books in the New Testament) he spends a lot of time making the point that the religion he once followed was all about toiling away under a bunch of rules but now, knowing Jesus, was about accepting that God had forgiven us by His grace and that we don’t have to labour under rules any more.

The best place; the executive summary – where he writes it in a nut shell is in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 to 10. He writes:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works so that no one may boast. For we are what He has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

And yet, now he’s talking about running a tough race; a brutal race – running in such a way that he may win. Hang on! Didn’t he just tell us about grace: For by grace you have been saved through faith, not of your own doing, not the result of works? And I have to tell you, for a long time, as I said last week, I found that kind of weird. I mean, on the one hand he is talking about grace now he is talking about running a race.

It’s something that I have come to call the ‘grace race’. Here’s why I think we find it weird: because as I said, we expect Christianity to be this airy-fairy, fluffy, super spiritual, cloud nine kind of thing. Lots of people accept Jesus with that sort of expectation. And yes, having a relationship with God is about grace and mercy and God’s love and that’s awesome and wondrous – that’s where a relationship with God is, but it doesn’t end there.

See, God has a life for us to live as well. There’s God in the Spiritual dimension and here’s you and me – we have a spirit – but for the time being at least, we live in the physical dimension. In the West we kind of put our spirituality in one box and our physicality (if I can call it that?) well, that’s out where we live. We don’t link that to our spirituality.

I was recently with a bunch of people – well meaning, but they were reading the Bible together, they were talking about it – but it never really seemed to occur to them that the stuff in there was supposed to make a difference in their real day to day lives. And that…..that is where the whole faith, Jesus, spirituality thing falls down for so many people. They start off on the right track, they meet Jesus somewhere on their road, but they never really expect Him to make a real difference in their lives.

You can’t live that sort of faith for long! If the prize at the end isn’t real, then any old distraction along the way and we are going to stop running the race, aren’t we? If Jesus isn’t real; I mean, real and we read what God’s Word says, His Word the Bible, and we go ‘Yea, that’s real, I expect that to work for me.’

If we are not in that place, well, you can’t sign up to a faith that is just in your head or just in your heart – it has to involve our lives as well – otherwise it don’t work, right? That’s where a lot of people are and so they start running the race but not with purpose; not with a focus on the end goal; not with a passion and a real belief that the prize is theirs.

Listen again to Paul in First Corinthians chapter 9, verse 24: “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.” I want to tell you something – so many people end up wandering off the track, distracted by the pretty girl, or the sunglasses or the new car or the career or whatever bauble flashes sunlight in their eyes – they just kind of wander off.

Without any real commitment to living a life with Jesus and for Jesus; no commitment to taking up their cross and following Him and at the first little disappointment or people make fun of you or people hurt you or people misunderstand you or……and we wander off because we are not running the race as though we are planning to win the prize. Do you get it?

And then, there we are at the side of the track, wandering aimlessly, amidst our distractions but here the crazy thing: we still expect to win the race – we do! How many people have I met and they believe in Jesus and yet, their life’s a mess – I mean a real mess? And you ask them ‘How close are you to Jesus? How do you live your life – do you pray most days? Do you spend time with Him most days? Do you read your Bible?

I know they sound like old fashioned things, don’t they? I know, they used to sound old fashioned to me too but it’s not old fashioned for an athlete to train; it’s not old fashioned for an athlete to work hard and to eat the right food and not to pig out on chocolates and soft drink and run and work and go to the gym – there’s nothing old fashioned about that! In fact, if they don’t do it, they are not going to win.

Well, hello! That’s what Paul is saying about running the race in such a way that we are going to win it. That’s why Paul takes this seriously. That’s why Paul isn’t some fluffy, super spiritual swami. And that…..that is why Paul is right!

Thorns of Life

I remember when I was in the Australian Army we used to go on some horrendous navigation exercises. One in particular stands out in my mind – navigating through jungle in a tropical region, with mosquitoes and leaches and heat and humidity. The undergrowth was so thick it could take a couple of hours to travel just a hundred meters, hacking through with our machetes.

There are two plants in particular, to this day, I hate, truly. One was lantana, a noxious weed introduced into Australia through European settlement. This plant was so thick with thorns and thick stems on them – it grows so dense and so high in tropical regions, it’s like hacking through a spiky, impenetrable wall – leaves your arms and hands covered with stinging, bleeding scratches.

Then there’s a vine that hangs down from the rainforest trees – it’s called ‘wait a while’ – there’s a reason for that – it has hooks on it and when it catches your skin, those hooks – hundreds of them – grip into your flesh and if you go forward, you will rip your flesh out. So the moment it grabs you, you stop and that’s why it’s called ‘wait a while’.

Thorns, it turns out, have an amazing ability to stop our progress. Now imagine…..imagine that you are trying to run that race we were talking about and all of a sudden, lantana and ‘wait a while’ are growing all over the track. Now that would be fun, wouldn’t it? Each of us has a life to live; special unique life; one of a kind and we know there are going to be some upside days and some downside days – some sunny days and some cold, wet, miserable days.

That’s life – I don’t want to trivialise that. If you have lost a loved one or if your are traumatised through war or if you have lost your job or your marriage, if you are struggling to put food on the table for your kids or one of your children is sick, there’s nothing trivial about any of those things.

I have had my times in my life where it’s been really quite desperate – we all do. I guess, right now is about shedding some light into that place. Sometimes we are in a bad place and it’s our fault. We are losing our house because we mismanaged our finances. We are losing our marriages because we didn’t love our wives or our husbands. Those are deep dark impenetrable places – they are, I know.

Other times though, the thorns are just starting to grow over the race track – its early days and we can do something about it before it gets out of hand; before we are hacking through mountains and walls of impenetrable lantana with bloodied hands.

I want to read something to you that Jesus said. It applies very much to you and me – to the race that we are running in our lives. See, people set out with good intentions with faith in their hearts; some belief in a good God and then so often, these thorns grow up and we completely lose sight of where we are going. Have a listen – it comes from Luke chapter 8, beginning at verse 4:

“A great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to Jesus and He said a parable to them: A sower went out to sow some seed and he sowed seed and some fell on the path and was trampled on and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock and as it grew, it withered from lack of moisture. Some fell among the thorns and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil and when it grew it produced a hundredfold. As He said this He called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

See, there they are, those thorns! But if you and I think this story is a bit obscure, well, we are not the only ones. Look how it rolls on in verse 9 of Luke chapter 8. His disciples asked Him what the parable meant:

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts, so they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, they receive it with joy. But these have no roots; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing they fall away.

As for that which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and the riches and the pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for those in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the Word of God, hold fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.”

Isn’t that so apt? This notion of the thorns; this wall of lantana that’s growing so brutally and so powerfully around us – it’s like a painful prison, choking out the light, choking out the good intentions we had when we started the race; choking out the words God speaks to us.

So many people believe in God from a distance but their ears have grown dull. They hear God’s Words but it doesn’t seem to occur to them that it applies to their lives. The cares of this world; their focus on the money; their focus on making it, on succeeding – we chase after those things and the thorns inexorably wrap themselves around our lives. ”As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear but as they go their way they are choked by the cares and the riches and the pleasures of life and the fruit does not mature.”

We never mature amongst those thorns. We are caught in a painful place; there’s no way out, or so it seems and I know there is someone listening today who is in that place. We thought the answer was in the riches of the world and yet we have been so sadly disappointed. How easy is it for the runner to lose his or her way in those thorns? Let me ask you: where has the seed of God’s Word fallen in your life – on the path, amongst the rocks, amongst the thorns or in the rich soil?

Get real – come on, be honest! Repent is such an old fashioned word but has a powerful meaning that is as relevant today as it was when Jesus used it. It means turning away from the things that have pierced us with many pains – the things that just don’t work – back to something that does – running the race that God’s planned for the joy that He set before us.

Two Masters

I’m not sure if you have ever owned a dog – I have had one in my day, when I was a teenager and these days I own a cat called ‘Doggie’ – strange but true and she behaves much more like a dog than a cat. Anyhow, here’s the thing about dogs – a dog, depending on its demeanour, will by and large, live happily with a family. Some better that others – Labradors are great family dogs, for instance. So they will live in a family but they always develop a special bond with one family member because at the end of the day, a dog wants to have just one master – not two, not three – one.

It’s the same with dogs used by the police or the military. The dog isn’t some commodity passed around from one person to the next. Each dog has just one handler; one master with whom it forms a special loyal bond. A dog cannot have two masters! Why? Well, what if this master tells it to do X and the other master tells it to do Y, it doesn’t work. So the dog has one master!

It’s a bit like that with us too! Have you ever been in a work situation or some group where the lines of delegation authority are not clear and someone will pop up and say, ‘I feel like a dog with two masters’?

As we conclude today, I just want to talk particularly about one thing that does that more than any other in our lives: the love of money. Now we all like money, not because it necessarily looks good or smells nice or feels nice but because of what it can buy. We love to buy things. For some people its clothes and shoes (well, wonder who that might be?) for others its gadgets and toys, a dream house, that renovation, this and that…. That’s in the affluent West where we spend more on pet food each year than we do on helping the poor.

But can I tell you, it’s true in poorer countries too. People who are struggling to survive in ghettos and shanty towns and refugee camps, relying on food deliveries by Aid Agencies with little or no hope of a job or an adequate income and somehow the West seems to dangle its baubles of their wealth in front of the noses of these people, so in their hearts they develop aspirations for those things no different to the affluent westerner.

Let’s get one thing straight: money itself is good – we all need to have it – we all need food and shelter but there comes a point when the love of money; the desire for wealth, takes on a new dimension. There is a line, when we step over it, that’s it. Jesus talked about it – have a listen – Matthew chapter 6, verse 24:

“No one can serve two masters. For a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

The word used there for ‘wealth’ is ‘mammon’ – it comes for the root word ‘the things that we put our trust in.’ See, what Jesus is saying here is: we can’t put our trust in God and in wealth because we will end up serving one or the other – not both. ‘Wealth’ is a better translation here than ‘money’. We can’t be a dog with two masters – we have to choose.

‘Well Berni, how does that work? Because I have to have money – I need money to live and survive and save for my old age. What are you saying?’ Simply this: that if we want to run the ‘grace race’; if we want to call Jesus Lord of our lives and bow our lives down to Him and live out and run that amazing race that He planned just for you and just for me, before time even began….if we want to do that, we cannot serve money; we cannot harbour a desire for wealth and riches – we cannot. Money must become a servant and not a master.

See. Here is where I have seen people get it wrong. The faith school that says: ‘blame it and grab it; name it and claim it; I can ask for anything in Jesus’ name and it will be given to me. We so pervert that and we decide that it’s like magic. I mean, Jesus actually said that but we turn it around and we say, “I’m going to get a bigger house and a better car and we’re going to claim this in Jesus’ name.’

See what’s happening here in the context of the dog with two masters? Wealth becomes the master and we make Jesus our servant and we get it the wrong way around. So many people start off with good intentions and then all of a sudden they lose their way because of money, so how do we make sure it doesn’t happen? Simple…..we put our financial resources at the complete disposal of God – we give some away – an amount that actually costs us; an amount that actually involves sacrifice.

It can be hard to start doing that in the beginning. I remember early in my Christian walk I was earning a lot of money. I came in touch with this concept of tithing; giving ten percent off the top to God’s work and so I did my sums on the calculator and I thought, ‘that’s a lot of money’ and I struggled. But since I came to grips with that, money has become my servant and my resources belong to God and even though now I have much less, actually I’m much better off.

Does that mean that we can’t spend anything on ourselves, or this or that? No, not at all! Listen to what it says in First Timothy chapter 6, verse 10: “It is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. And in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

Being a slave to money is a very painful thing. It never satisfies and it always costs a lot. It’s just not worth it. Let me come back to it: money is a good servant but wealth is a rotten master.

What’s the aim of your life? See, the Apostle Paul was talking about running his race for God: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete but only one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may win it.” Pursuing wealth and the pleasures of this world – that effects the decisions we make and at the end of the day, we can’t serve our own desires for wealth and God at the same time.

“No one can serve two masters. For a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” It’s that simple!

When we give our lives over to Jesus Christ, it ain’t going to be easy. There is a cost – it is going to cost us our lives.

To the End

Now I have a confession to make: I hate running – love walking but I hate running. There is something about the impact and the breathing so heavy and the muscles aching – doesn’t matter how often I have tried it, I just hate it. And so if you are a runner, I don’t mean to offend you, it’s just not for me. So when I hear people talking about a Fun Run, I think to myself, ‘What’s the matter with you, are you nuts? How can you put ‘fun’ and ‘run’ in the same sentence?

When I was in the Army, particularly in those early years when I was training to be an officer, we were young and incredibly fit, even then, I hated running. And there’s one thing I know about running: when your heart feels like it is going to explode and we are hot and tired and thirsty and aching, when you have lost sight of why it is that you are even running and you can’t imagine stumbling over the finish line, there is just one thing you want to do; you want to stop. You want to pull over and sit down under a shady tree, have a drink and give it all away.

And I know that because I have been there so many times – running races when I was in the Army and running that one race that matters most of all – the race we call ‘life’. Been there so many times in that race called ‘life’ where I just wanted to pull over and give up, and my hunch is, so have you.

It doesn’t matter what kind of a race we are in; whether we are studying to finish a course at school or college; whether it is bringing up kids; maybe it’s work that’s really hard and then there is life itself. So many people set off with great hopes and dreams and ideals. So many people set off on their relationship with God – they hear about Jesus, they go, ‘Yea, WOW, I believe that; that kind of works for me,’ so they head off.

But what they soon discover is that it’s like running a race – it’s hard some days and the further you go, the harder it seems to get. The heart’s pounding and every muscle is aching and you are out of breath and before you know it, what you really want to do is pull over and stop. It’s the logical thing to do, right?

But what might surprise you to know – or maybe you knew it already, but in the hurly burly of the race, it’s easy to forget – is this: it’s exactly what Jesus promised – have a listen to this: in Matthew chapter 7, verses 13 and 14. He said:

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction. There are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.”

It’s kind of counter intuitive, isn’t it? I mean, you would think that if God is God and Jesus is who He said He is and that we decide to go and follow Him, it should be much easier than it is, but it’s not. A lot of times it is really tough.

This week on the programme I am going to share some things with you to nourish your heart – to put those tough times into perspective. I know there are people who want to give up the race – the very race that is more important than any other – the one at the end of which lies the prize of life eternal.

So if you are after some sugar candy, fairy floss kind of Christian spirituality, this programme is not for you. But if your soul is dry and aching and you yearn for some nourishment and refreshment and if you are aching to have God breathe a fresh new hope and life deep into your spirit, then you definitely want to take this in.

I want to start today with something that Jesus said to His disciples. Have a listen – this is so powerful. If you have a Bible, grab it – we are going to Matthew chapter 24, beginning at verse 1:

“As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, His disciples came to point out to Him the buildings of the temple. Then He asked them, “You see all these don’t you? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.

When He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when this will be and what will be the sign of Your coming in the end of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Messiah!” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places; all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

Then they will hand you over to be tortured and you will be put to death and you will be hated by all nations because of My name. Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

That temple He was talking about took decades to build. It was the heart; the centre of Israel’s belief in God – up on that hill where God’s presence dwelt in the Holy of Holies… They couldn’t imagine that it could ever be gone and yet, in AD 70, after Jesus death, it was destroyed.

What Jesus is describing to them here is an uncertain world…..a world where their faith in God would not have the rock solid foundations of the temple – a world of turmoil; a world where things were not what they seemed; a world where people would come proclaiming seductive things. People doing it in God’s name – they would be false prophets. A world of birth pangs – a world of betrayal and lawlessness.

This is our world He is describing – yours and mine…..a world where you and I have every reason to let our love for Jesus grow cold – a world where they will persecute us. But listen again to what Jesus says to them. Matthew chapter 24, verse 13: “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

See, sometimes….sometimes we use the excuse of our circumstances of life to give up the race. We reason, well, if God is God it should be easier than this, shouldn’t it? If God is God; if He is my God, my husband should love me; my finances shouldn’t be a mess; my son shouldn’t be on drugs; my family shouldn’t be fleeing another war into the hopelessness of a refugee camp….whatever it is; whatever our circumstances are; whatever is making us afraid. You see, we have these rose coloured expectations of what it means to be one of God’s people and when those expectations aren’t met, we want to use that as an excuse to give up.

Jesus said to them, “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars; don’t be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be famines and earthquakes in various places; all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

Then they will hand you over to be tortured and you will be put to death and you will be hated by the nations because of My name. But the one who endures to the end, that one will be saved.”

Don’t Worry

These last few weeks on the programme we have been talking about running the race in order to win the prize. Not a foot race; not a horse race; not a car race but the race of life……the life that God set before each one of us. Now along the way there can be many distractions – things that cause us to pull over or to turn back and one of those is other people behaving badly.

What happens so often is this: someone decides to run their race for God; that somewhere along their path they have met this Jesus from deep within their hearts that decided to reach out to Him and so has begun the race of a life time…..a race begun with all the best intentions. But then what we notice is this: there are people around us behaving….well they are not behaving like they should be – even people who claim to be running the same race. Sometimes it especially those people in God’s family who seem to be behaving badly. And it gets to us; they hurt us; there is a temptation to give them what they deserve – to behave badly towards them like they are towards us. And before you know it, we have become just like them – exactly like them. We meet someone else along the way who has just started his race and history repeats itself over and over again.

Kind of depressing isn’t it? So many people starting running the ‘grace race’, the race of faith and they discover it’s hard; it’s tough – circumstances, people – they all seem to conspire against us; not quite what we expected. And you know the bit that really gets me: it’s when other people start behaving badly.

I remember quite a few times alone my journey; my race of faith, where other Christians, people much more mature than me; people who had been walking with God much longer than me; people who should have known better, seemed to want to drag me down.

Now I sold my life completely out to God – I don’t do things in half measures – that’s just the sort of person I am – I gave my life to Jesus – I gave Him the lot. But then along the way you meet people who are lukewarm; people who make compromises in their lives; people who into petty bickering and backbiting; people who wanted me to descend to their level and carry the brand ‘Christian’ around on their terms; people who rejected me; people who deliberately set out to hurt me.

To tell you the truth, in my early days as a Christian I often sometimes wondered whether there was something wrong with me! You still do some days. You have this deep passion for Jesus; this desire to make a difference; this heart to use the few things that God puts into your hands for others and then they want to pull you down. Don’t get me wrong! Please make no mistake – I make mistakes along the way. I stumble over; I get up, I ask God for His forgiveness, I dust myself off and I keep going.

We are all on a journey – we are all running a race but it seems to me that there are two sorts of people on that racetrack – those who are completely sold out to Jesus and those who aren’t. And there are more in the second group than there are in the first. It’s so easy to let them slow you down; to get with the pack; to compromise; to lose the fire in your heart; to lose the passion for Jesus and for a lost and hurting world.

And before we know it we are back where we started. Just like anyone else in this world, you wake up one day and you realise the race that we started, with all those good intentions – if we are really honest with ourselves…..really – we have given up.

I want to share something with you today the Apostle Paul wrote about that very thing. Have a listen – it comes from Galatians chapter 6, beginning at verse 7:

“Don’t be deceived; God isn’t mocked. You will reap what you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”

The bit of that that really cuts to the quick is the bit about not growing weary in doing what is right: for at harvest time we will reap, if we don’t give up. Then someone gets angry and nasty towards us – at first, well, maybe at first we try to deal with them lovingly, with good intentions. You know, ‘I believe in Jesus; I’m supposed to love everyone and I’m supposed to be sweet for a while,’ but after a while, when they keep on lying and swearing and….it wears us down.

You get sick and tired of that and one day, something snaps – ‘That’s it, I have had enough,’ and so we give them a serve. We start treating them the way they were treating us – it becomes about winning. Why do we do that? Why do we stop running the race of love and sacrifice that Jesus has called us to? Simple – we grew weary! We had enough!

Now I don’t know where you are in your faith. I don’t want to assume you are completely sold out to Jesus – maybe you are, maybe you’re not, but my hunch is this: the things we have been talking about; they kind of ring true in your heart too, don’t they? We can all relate to this!

Let me state it plain and simple: God is an amazing God – He loves us so dearly. He sent His Son to pay the price for all our mistakes; all our rebellion and when we put our trust in Him, not only do we get an eternal life, but we get a new life; a fresh life; our slate wiped clean here on this earth. And part of living that new life of freedom is discovering that there is a better way to live; a way that works so much better than the old way, but it involves sacrifice – there’s a cost. And yet the prize….the prize is freedom and joy and peace; the prize is worth it.

Be Prepared

Sadly, so many people start off wanting to run a race like that, but somehow it does all get too hard. It’s like we haven’t prepared ourselves for what lies ahead – it’s as though we haven’t soberly sat down and figured out that when we give our lives over to Jesus Christ it ain’t going to be easy – there is a cost – it’s going to cost us our lives!

So we head off with this kind of fairy floss expectation; completely unprepared for what lies ahead. Most of us will have heard the old Boy Scout’s motto, ‘Be Prepared’ but that could be interpreted in a whole bunch of different ways. So someone once asked Lord Baden Powell, the founder of the Scouts Movement, what it meant. What should we be prepared for? And his answer was, “Why, for any old thing!”

So many people start a course of study at college or university with the best intentions, why? – because they want the qualification; the reward that comes at the end. But when they get into it they discover it’s so much harder than they thought it would be. They have to give up their social life to do assignments; they have to give up their income to spend time studying and so, visit any college or university and you will discover a pretty high drop-out rate.

I went to the Officer Training Academy of the Australian Army at Duntroon – seven thousand applied to start the four year course – seven thousand! Of those one hundred and forty eight were accepted and after four years, only sixty two of those original one hundred and forty eight graduated – less than half. Eighty six of our colleagues fell along the way.

It happens in sport; it happens in music and the arts; it happens in just about any walk of life and it happens in our walk with Jesus. There is a simple dynamic at play here because, to win the prize in the future, you have to make sacrifices today. And many people aren’t prepared to make those sacrifices. That’s why Jesus said to His followers – He said:

“Whoever comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even life itself, cannot be My disciple. Whoever doesn’t carry the cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you intending to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and estimate the cost to see whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish it, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build but wasn’t able to finish.” That comes from Luke chapter 14, beginning at verse 26.

That’s why today we are going to count the cost. We need to be prepared for the reality and actually, once we get our minds and our hearts around the reality, it’s actually not that bad. Have a listen to Peter the Apostle in what he writes in his letter, First Peter chapter 1, beginning at verse 13. He says:

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when He is revealed. Like obedient children, don’t be conformed to the desires that you had formerly in ignorance. Instead, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

“Prepare your minds for action”, literally, he writes, “Gird up your loins”. It’s a picture of a Roman soldier who has a long tunic and before the battle he takes the tunic and tucks it into his belt to get ready so he doesn’t trip over himself. Discipline yourselves; set your hope on Jesus; get ready; get real!

You know, in the battles of old, they would have a banner; a standard; the colours, they called it and in the middle of the battle the soldiers would rally around that, with their eyes fixed on it. And that’s what Peter is saying here – get focused on what you are about. Things are going to get tough because when we decide to run this ‘grace race’ the rest of the world isn’t going to be pleased with us.

“Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you once had formerly in ignorance.” Give up the old desires; the selfishness, the desire for wealth, greed, laziness, slander, backbiting….all those things. We know they are not good and it’s not going to be easy to give them up because we are stepping out of the world’s parade and beginning to march to a different drum. That’s what Peter is saying – “instead of those, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

The word ‘holy’ means to be clean and pure and set apart, like a vessel to be used by God for His glory. It’s a hard call some days! The little hidden compromises – giving those up for God’s pleasure; for God’s glory isn’t easy – let’s be prepared – there’s a cost. Let’s expect those difficult days to come so when they do, we walk into them, thinking, ‘Well, Lord, you know, the day I stepped out on this battle field I always knew this day would come. I knew it would be hard to give this up – I knew I would need Your help. We are going to get through this – I’m going to run this race today for You and with You and through You, by Your strength.’

Instead of, ‘Oh, God, what’s going on here? Why is this happening to me? How long is it going to go on?’ Wake up! That’s like the soldier going into a battle expecting not to get shot at! By definition, the soldier who steps on the battlefield is going to get shot at. That’s why he is a soldier in battle and it’s the same for us. We need to ditch this airy fairy notion that following Jesus is about floating around on cloud nine and step out of the world’s parade and start marching to the beat of a different drum.

This is precisely…….precisely like stepping onto a battlefield. We are going to get shot at – therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that is Jesus Christ – on that banner in the middle of the battle. Here’s the thing; the whole point of believing in Jesus is: that we run the race to the end because the prize at the end is worth it.

I know there are things that make you want to give up. There are things that make me want to give up and there are days when it’s not convenient and it’s not comfortable and we don’t want to play the game.

Run the race to the end! Don’t be conformed to your previous desires; set your hope on Jesus Christ and run it to the end because the prize is worth it!!