Skip to main content

Run the Race


This morning I had a great run along the banks of the Roanoke River. It was perfect weather for running and I had lots of company along the way. I love seeing people outdoors enjoying God’s creation.

Hebrews 12.1 says, “let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” In this verse running is a metaphor for following God. Even if you are not a runner, it is a simple metaphor to understand.

We are called to run the race set before us. When you compete in a race, race organizers have already determined the boundaries of the race and the starting and finishing points. Runners simply line up and run the race. In this sense, following God is simpler than we sometimes think. God hasn’t called us to solve all of the problems of the world. He has called us to trust Him and follow the path that He has set for us.

I have a tendency to attempt races (or at least paces) that God has not set before me. I am competitive by nature. I try to deny that I am competitive, but the drive is deep within me. Last week, I was enjoying a short run in a neighborhood park before heading to the office for the day. About three laps into my run I noticed a guy getting closer to me on the track. At his pace he would soon pass me. I also noticed that he was about half my age. At first, I shrugged it off as just being part of life. We all get older and a little slower with time. Then I decided to pick up my pace. Soon I was running at race pace and after a few laps I noticed that the young guy was no longer gaining on me. By the end of my run, the young guy was walking. I felt pretty good about myself…for about a minute. Then, I realized that the young guy probably wasn’t even aware that I was “racing” against him.

Being competitive isn’t wrong. Getting distracted from the race God has set before in life is the real danger. We can be sidetracked by goals that have little or no eternal value. We can chase the wrong goals because someone in our life makes us feel guilty or because we lack personal fulfillment. Running the wrong races can drain us unnecessarily and keep us from the running the real race set before us.

How do we keep from running races God hasn’t given us in life? Consider Jesus. He is the focal point, not other runners. Hebrews 12.2 says, “We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Life Worth Living

We all have an idea of how we hope that our life would go. We all have dreams. We have dreams for our own lives and the lives of people who are close to us. We have goals that we would like to accomplish during our lifetime. We have a measure of what would constitute a complete life for us. When reality does not match our idealized life, we are disappointed and sad. We grieve the loss of a life that we had imagined both for ourselves and those who are close to us. We wonder where God is in all of these situations. The Bible tells us about a man with whom we can identify. Jacob’s life had taken several unexpected twists, yet he came to the end of his life content with God’s will. Jacob was ready to die, when his end was approaching. He was at peace with his life and all that God had done through him even though life had not turned out the way that he had planned. Finally, Jacob said to Joseph, “Now I am ready to die, since I have seen your face again and know you are still al

Why people don't go to church

As a pastor, one of the consuming questions with which I wrestle is “Why don’t people go to church?” In particular, the question is “Why don’t people come to my church?” If you doubt that people are opinionated, ask this question to a group of church people on a Wednesday night. I’ve studied church growth for several years, and I have a number of opinions about the matter myself. But, I wonder if we are asking the right question to the wrong people. Several researchers in the last few years have begun asking people who don’t attend church why they don’t attend church, and the answers are interesting. George Barna asked this question and provided the answers in his book, Grow Your Church from the Outside In . The top five reasons that people gave for not attending church comprise 83% of the reasons why people don’t come to church. 1. No time; schedule conflicts; working 26% 2. Not interested; nothing to offer; no reason 16% 3. Don’t know 15% 4. My beliefs are different than the church’s

Technical Difficulty

This blog has been inactive for a while due to some technical issues. It is good to be back and I have learned that my technical ability has declined in the last few years. It is amazing how quickly things change. I have been around computers for almost 30 years. My dad bought a commodore 64 in the early 80’s and bought an IMB clone pc later that decade. I spent part of my childhood playing Impossible Mission and Pac Man while typing the occasional paper. For those of you who did not grow up in the 80’s, yes, typing a paper was a big deal. I’m surprised that I didn’t get beat up more as a kid. I learned how to use pc’s before Windows 3.1 and remember when Word Perfect was better than Word – the WYSIWYG was way better on Word Perfect when printing to a dot matrix. While I was in college in the early 90’s I took computer programming and worked in the computer lab. During graduate studies I continued working in computer labs and began doing contract work for computer vendors