I’d like to just first pray and thank the Lord for what we just heard from our brother Josh.
Lord, thank You so much for pouring Your heart out through our brother Josh, for how precious You see us, and how great the cost You paid to save us, Lord. I just commit myself to You. Let my words be clear, and may I be used as a vessel to communicate to Your body what You want to say. In Jesus’ name, amen.
That is not my slides. Ooh, thank you.
All right. Take a cough drop. Can you pass me my water? Thanks, John.
So today, I will be discussing running the race of faith. The passage that I derived all of this from is Hebrews 12. I’ll be discussing this in three parts, starting with the very first one: what is our calling? Glad you asked.
If we go ahead and turn to Hebrews 12:1-3, we can read:
Therefore, 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, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Let’s break that down. First of all, “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” I believe this right here is a very clear calling for us believers.
Because from that, we can learn that the Christian life that we’re called into is one of great endurance and perseverance. It is not just a short little sprint. Oftentimes, I think we might desire that we get saved, live a nice Christian life, easygoing, and then get called up to the Lord. However, I don’t think that is often the case, because we know it is one that requires much endurance, and it is more of a marathon.
If you’ve ever been in a marathon, you might be running it and then be thinking to yourself, “Why did I sign up for this?” It just feels like forever. And for that good reason, I have never signed up for one of these things.
Second, “Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Thank the Lord, God knows how tough this journey of faith is for us. And so, Christ is our example, and He is our motivation to press onward.
I’m so glad that because Christ leads us, as long as we abide in Him, I’m confident that we are in good hands.
Sorry, some more technical difficulties. Josh, we might need you.
So, I’m about to dive into a little bit of a personal story, and this is also kind of why I chose this theme of running the race of faith.
Back in high school, I decided to sign up for the cross-country team. It’s called cross-country because you’re running not only on plain, flat grass, but also through the woods and jumping creeks and all of that.
Compared to my friend Barrett here, who runs track: when you’re running track, you’re on a nice paved circle, and it’s so satisfying to run on. Meanwhile, with cross-country, you can look at this guy over here next to me—he’s going through it.
And the reason why it looks like I’m smiling is actually because the reason I signed up for cross-country wasn’t because I actually liked running. It was more because I was a soccer player and I wanted to condition my body for the upcoming season. So I just ran for fun. He ran for seriousness.
But I think our Christian life is often like running cross-country. You have to just endure so much. And I actually learned two good qualities that make a good runner—AKA, us as Christians.
Number one is perseverance. The best runners push themselves even when their body is telling them, “Stop. Please stop. Take a break.”
In the same way, since we are called to persevere, our eyes need to be fixed on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.
The second one is confidence, right? A good runner understands that the course that they are running isn’t impossible and that there were runners before who have accomplished the course.
In the same way, we need to remember that Christ came before us. He endured opposition from almost everybody, endured the cross, and is now seated at the right hand of God, glorified.
So that is a wonderful thing that we can have confidence in, knowing Christ came before us. And He is interceding for us right now. So, as Christians, we need to understand that as we run this race, we must endure hardship as a good soldier of Christ, according to 2 Timothy 2:3. That needs to be part of our mindset.
The second part of running this race is that oftentimes we might face some problems. What is it? Glad you asked again: distractions.
Unfortunately, back in cross-country, the wood section of the course often looked like this. It’s not an exaggeration. There’s roots and sticks and rocks everywhere. I don’t know why they would let us run on this, but we did.
Doesn’t that look like the Christian life sometimes? It’s the narrow gate that is hard. Yeah, we’re running it together, right?
And let me tell you another story. In a race one time, I remember I was going so fast. I’m thinking in my head, “I’m about to get a record for myself because of how fast I’m going.”
And I reached the woods portion, and I started thinking about, “Ooh, how about the people behind me? I can’t let them pass me. I need to keep on going.” So I started looking back, and next thing you know, I tripped on one of these and went boom, straight down.
If you’ve ever run long distance, you know that once you get into a tempo, it’s easy to keep going until you have to stop. And once I fell, it took me a couple minutes just to get back up, recuperate, and push on.
When I crossed the finish line, I was bruised and battered. My knee was bleeding. And that was one of the slowest races I’ve ever run because I fell. I got distracted by people around me. I stopped focusing on actually running the course I had.
And so, how many times in our race of faith will distractions make us fall as well? These examples can include career, relationships, reputation, money, fame, security, power—you name it. All of these things can cause us to take our eyes off Christ while we’re running and stumble.
Let me go into an example that we find in the Bible of distractions: the Israelites.
Let me read from Haggai 1:1-4:
In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest.
This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’”
Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”
What can we learn from this, right? A little background with these Israelites is that a good number of them were exiled by the Babylonians when they came in and wiped out everything. Then the Persians came and destroyed the Babylonians, and the new Persian king was like, “Hey, a couple of you Israelites, you can go back and rebuild.”
And so they got a group of them in Ezra. They returned, started building the altar for sacrifices, and started laying down the foundation of the Lord’s temple.
But then, because of opposition from the neighbors, they stopped. And they began building their own houses. They said, “Okay, our neighbors don’t want us to be building the Lord’s temple right now. Let me just go ahead and focus on building my own habitation, my own life. Let me fix it up. Let me make it fancy.”
And we can see that the Israelites here lost their priority by focusing on themselves rather than what the Lord had on His heart. The Lord wanted a dwelling place among the people, and yet they did not see that.
So what does the Lord do to bring us back from these distractions that we might face? The solution: God will sometimes use discipline.
The issue with distraction is we sometimes might grow so comfortable living in it that we are not even aware that it’s a problem. That’s why the Lord has to discipline and train us, and sometimes even allow trials and hardships to come into our life, so that it will bring us to our knees in prayer.
Here are some verses on discipline. Proverbs 3:11-12:
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,
and do not resent His rebuke,
because the Lord disciplines those He loves,
as a father the son He delights in.
Notice how it says, “Do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent His rebuke,” right? It’s almost as if it’s written knowing that, when reading this, the reader might have some sort of bad reaction to the Lord’s discipline.
We can relate to this when I think of when I was younger and my parents had to discipline me. At the time, it didn’t make sense. And I often said, “Mom, Dad, stop doing this to me. You guys are disciplining me because you don’t love me. You guys are taking away my stuff. You guys are locking me in my room because you don’t love me.”
But now, looking back, I’m so thankful that they did that because they did love me. It’s because they wanted me to grow. They wanted goodness for me, a better future. That’s why they disciplined me.
And the thing is, if you belong to God, then He is a Father to us, and He will discipline you because He loves us.
Another verse, from Hebrews 12:11:
For at the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant,
but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness
to those who have been trained by it.
Of course, discipline never feels good in the moment. But what are the fruits that it produces? Over here, it says the discipline of the Lord produces righteousness. And I think that’s what my parents were hoping for back when they disciplined me when I was younger.
Going back to our example of the Israelites, you remember how they got distracted building their own fancy houses. How did the Lord discipline them?
We turn to Haggai 1:10-11:
Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops.
I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil, and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.
The Israelites over here got struck with so much drought, they couldn’t really grow any of their crops, and their livestock was suffering.
And I think this was a necessary thing that the Lord did in order to make sure these Israelites would go and seek God again. Because imagine if they started building their nice paneled houses and all the crops they were planting were thriving. Why would they need God, right?
And so, the Lord used this type of discipline to bring them back to Him. So what was the Israelites’ reaction to all of this training, discipline, and trials?
Haggai 1:12 says:
Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the Lord their God had sent him, and the people feared the Lord.
Praise the Lord. The people got convicted. And not only were they convicted, but they actually responded. They obeyed the Lord because they had such reverence and fear for Him.
So for us, we can learn to press onward. I do not know what is going on in your own personal lives. I do not say that this is an all-encompassing, comprehensive view of everybody’s race of faith. This is just what the Lord has revealed to me, a 21-year-old.
And I know that oftentimes, when I get distracted, the Lord has to bring in some hardships in order to focus my eyes back on Him.
What we can learn from all of this is that, brothers and sisters, we must remember: we are bought with the blood of Christ. God gave His greatest treasure, Jesus, for us. Who would just give you their best thing and then try to harm you for no reason? God is not like that. He already gave us Jesus, and everything He now does for us is for our own benefit.
God’s discipline and trials draw us closer to Him. It hurts in the moment, but in the end it is supposed to produce fruits of righteousness if we endure.
And thankfully, we can run this race of endurance together while fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
I want to leave you guys with one last verse, from James 1:12:
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
Let’s continue on, keep our eyes on the Lord, and run this race together.
Lord, thank You so much for how our calling from You is to run this race of faith with great endurance and perseverance. It’s not one that we complete quickly, but thankfully, Lord, we have You by our side this whole time.
It’s going to be tough, Lord, but thank You for one another as well, where we can lift one another up and use our prayers to intercede for one another.
I just pray that today we might all be encouraged to press onward, Lord, and not let anything currently going on in our lives drag us down from what our great calling is. Thank You so much. In Jesus’ name, amen.