Run Your Race part 4

 Run Your Race 4


Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us…


The average person has no idea what it takes just to get to the starting line, much less to the winners circle and a championship.  They see the smoke of the burnout, the wheel stand, the “whomp - whomp” on the big end, and the winners circle picture with the huge fake check.  Of course what they don’t see is the late nights in the garage putting the motor together, the meals skipped because you reinstalled the transmission three times that week.  They don’t see the knuckle you bloodied tightening the converter during the third transmission change.  Is the race worth it?  In the moment, we might have our doubts, but I think all of us would resoundingly answer YES!  

The word “patience” in our passage above actually means endurance. It carries with it the idea of enduring hardship for the sake of the race. It is the characteristic of one who will not swerve from his/her deliberate purpose even in the greatest of trials and sufferings.  Our writer is urging us to never give up, keep serving our Lord!

How does one develop spiritual endurance? The same way we develop physical endurance…we train for it.  As a high school football player our summer training included a lot of endurance running. Football is a series of short sprints, so why did our coaches include miles long runs to our regime? Because the season is long.  We needed to be in condition to endure the challenges of the long season.  We didn’t start at two miles a day, we would start at quarter miles, half miles, building eventually to the two-mile fitness test.  

Our God knows what we need to run our Christian race.  Therefore, He conditions us for it.  He allows (or even sets in our path) deliberate trials that build our spiritual endurance. As we trust  and learn from those trials, we become stronger.   Our part is to simply NOT QUIT!  Is the race worth it?  YES!

Race On 

Dean



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