Consistency in the Race of Faith

“Train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7b).

The Apostle Paul uses an athletic term to picture the way we grow in the Christian life. We must discipline ourselves in training so that we run the race of faith well. One aspect of that discipline is consistency.

I was a 16-year-old high school track athlete in 1972, the year of the Munich Olympic Games. When Frank Shorter won the marathon in dominating fashion, the vague idea that someday I might run a marathon become the certainty that I would. My friends and I wanted to be like Frank. So we began reading all we could about who he was and how he trained.

We discovered lots of interesting tidbits, but what struck me most was his consistency. If I recall correctly, in the seven years leading up to the Munich marathon, he ran every day. He never missed even one day.

Consistency in running is central. One coach puts it this way:

[A runner may say,] “Surely to miss training just this once will not matter? After all, there is a long season of it lying ahead.” But to miss training once is to open a breach in the wall of routine. And a single breach will almost certainly be followed by others, to the point where there is no routine left. And then, bang! — there goes your ambition to be a runner.

The runner’s statement actually is true; to miss one day in and of itself is not going to destroy your training. But missing days develops a bad habit; it changes one’s perception of what one is about. Running becomes not something you do because of who you are – running becomes something you do when it is convenient.

Alternately, if you stick to your plan every day, rain or shine, cold or hot, windy or calm, tired or fresh – you see yourself differently. With every step of consistency, you define more clearly who you are.

I went through something similar with cycling this spring, preparing to bike almost 500 miles in four days from Charlotte to DC. Once I registered for the ride, I had to prepare myself to complete it. I couldn’t just ride however I felt. So there was a fundamental change in my attitude towards riding: I had to be consistent to meet the goal. I had to become a cyclist.

Just so in the Christian life. I can dabble in Bible reading and church attendance and prayer; I can do occasional acts that look loving and now and then speak the Gospel. But if this is who I am, then these are central to my life. I no longer just dabble. I train myself for godliness.

For if I realize that I am a sinner at my very core, that without daily apprehending the cross my mind will wander, making me ineffective and unproductive, then I will be sure to get up in the morning, get into the Word, seek God’s face, seek His grace; I will be sure to sit under good preaching and to seek out helpful mentors; I will speak the Gospel even if it makes me uncomfortable and will act in love even when it hurts.

And when you do this – when you consistently train yourself for godliness, as you overcome daily the common hindrances – just as with the runner or cyclist, you define much more clearly who you are.

Furthermore, every day of consistency makes the next day’s obedience that much easier. One coach writes, “Run until the question of not running just never arises.” A day without running is not even an option. Just so for us: A day without seeking God’s face becomes not even an option. Instead of a vicious circle, a downward spiral, we become part of a virtuous circle, an upward spiral: Seeking God’s face this week gives me joy and peace, which spurs me one to seek His face and live out the Christian life that much more next week. And the circle continues.

My wise wife wrote of this several years ago:

Will my children remember their mother reading the Bible consistently? Will they picture in their minds a straw basket with Bible, Valley of Vision prayer book, journal, and prayer notebook? Will they picture their mother swinging gently on the porch swing, Bible in hand or curled up in the wing chair in the music room, head bowed. Will it be a consistent memory?

It is certainly not just for the memory in my children’s minds that this consistency is important. Oh no. It is vitally important for now, for every day, for wisdom and discernment, for knowledge and understanding, for contentment and spurring on. It is as vital to my life as an Olympic athlete’s consistent training is. No, it is more vital. Because, unlike the Olympic athlete who may only take his gold medal as far as the grave, the benefits of consistency in walking with God are eternal. . . . “Consistency makes a statement to yourself, ‘I am a child of God.’” That’s who I am. Spending time in the word is simply what a child of God does, like running is what a runner does. I can’t live without it.

So train yourself for godliness – consistently. Become who you are: A child of God.

 

 

Runners, To Your Marks; Get Set; Go!

“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:13

Think about this verse as a daily exercise: Every day, begin by preparing your minds for action. Then throughout the day, be completely sober-minded. This enables you, thirdly, to set your hope fully on the future grace we will receive when Jesus returns.

Before we elaborate on each step, think over this analogy:

Consider each day of living the Christian life as a 400 meter run. Prior to being called to the start, you need to make sure you’re dressed in running clothes. Your shoes must be tied. Your spikes must be tightened. Then, crouched in the blocks before the race starts, you must prepare your mind for action: You have to get ready to make an extreme effort. You must put aside all other thoughts, all distractions. You must focus on the starter, ready to explode as soon as the gun sounds.

Then, throughout the race, you must be “sober-minded.” That is, you must maintain your focus on running well, even as your body screams out that the sprint is too painful. You must relax your shoulders and your jaw, while maintaining your knee lift and efficient form.

Finally, you set your hope on the coming, certain end. The race will seem interminable. The finish line may appear to recede instead of drawing closer. Your legs may feel like lead. But the end is certain. The race will end, and its end will be glorious.

Prepare Your Mind for Action

The King James Version translates this phrase literally, “Gird up the loins of your minds.” In Peter’s day, men normally wore robes or tunics that draped down to their ankles. Imagine trying to run in such clothing! So any time a man had to move quickly, or to engage in difficult labor, he would tie up the robe around his waist. In this way he prepared himself for action.

Similar ideas occur several times in the Old Testament. For example, God tells the Israelites to eat the Passover “with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand” (Exodus 12:11). They are to be ready to move the minute God gives the command.

How do we fulfill this on a day to day basis? How do we prepare ourselves, so we are ready for whatever action God has in store for us?

  • We must remind ourselves of the truths of the Gospel, of the promises of God, of His character, of the work of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit’s presence.
  • We must reflect on how we failed in the fight of faith yesterday, and determine how to depend on God to fight that fight today.
  • We must pray for ourselves, and pray for others, confident that brothers and sisters are praying for us.
  • We must go to the Word, seeking the Spirit’s insight and encouragement, picking out what we will meditate, learn from, and put into practice this day.

Be Completely Sober-Minded

Having been prepared, we must run today’s race. We must maintain a constant vigilance against the distractions that come our way continually.

Satan sometimes tempts us directly to doubt God’s goodness, to doubt His power, and to doubt our status before Him.  Other times he instead tries to distract us from the task, encouraging us to think of other aspects of life – our jobs, our families, our health, our safety, our entertainment, our education – as more important, more vital, more urgent than Jesus and His Kingdom. One way or another, he tries to envelope us in a fog on unbelief, in which the truths of God seem unreal, immaterial, and unimportant. In that fog, we effectively are drunk, not sober; we’re not thinking clearly about Who God is; we’re not trusting His revelation of the nature of Reality.

So we must maintain our sobriety. We must be completely sober-minded.

Set Your Hope Fully on the Grace That Will Be Brought to You at the Revelation of Jesus Christ

Note that Peter tells us to set our hope on future grace. God has given us great grace already if we are in Christ. We are to reflect on that in preparing our minds for action, and hold on firmly to that truth by being sober-minded. But we are to set our hope fully on the future grace that will be ours when Jesus returns, when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15).

What grace will we receive in that day? Peter has already mentioned some aspects of this grace:

  • 1 Peter 1:4: An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, protected in heaven for us
  • 1 Peter 1:5: The completion of our salvation, which is ready for us, and will be revealed to us in the last time.

From other Scriptures we know: We will know fully, even as we are fully known. We will see Him face to face. He will rejoice over us with loud singing. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. We will receive incorruptible, sinless, eternal bodies. The entire creation will be made new. There will be no more sin, no more sorrow, no more pain. God Himself will be our light.

The glory of the finish line helps the 400 meter runner to endure. Just so, the glories of Jesus’ return help us. But Peter hints that we have another reason to hope in the midst of trials.

Literally, Peter says, “Set your hope fully on the grace that is being brought to you.” That is, the participle Peter uses is in the present tense, not the future. What’s the difference, since Jesus’ return is obviously future?

Had the tense been future, Peter’s emphasis would have been solely on the grace that will be ours on that great day. By using the present tense, Peter emphasizes, in addition, that right now all you experience is bringing about the culmination of God’s Plan. All your pain, all your sorrow, all your difficulties and trials work to bring about this coming grace, this return of Jesus – and with Him, your inheritance of all things.

This is our hope. Day by day, throughout every day, remind yourself: Right now, God is working through all that happens to bring about that Final Day, with its great outpouring of grace.

The Foundation for Peter’s Commands

Consider finally some of the exhortations and commands Peter gives in the remainder of this letter. All are grounded in 1 Peter 1:13:

  • Be holy in all your conduct
  • Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which includes putting away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander
  • Long for the spiritual milk of the Word
  • Love one another earnestly, having unity of mind
  • Be subject to authority: everyone to governments, wives to husbands, servants to masters, the younger to elders
  • Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding manner
  • Elders, shepherd the flock eagerly, willingly, setting an example
  • Proclaim the excellencies of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light
  • Be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you
  • In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy
  • Live for the will of God
  • Show hospitality without grumbling
  • Use your gifts to serve one another to God’s glory
  • Rejoice as you share Christ’s sufferings
  • Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another
  • Cast your anxieties on God
  • Resist the devil

So, my friends, today and every day: Prepare your minds for action! Gird up that long robe! Get ready to run! Listen for His command! Be like the Israelites at Passover, all ready to head out at God’s command.

Keep being sober minded. Prepare your minds so that you can avoid the fog of unbelief and maintain your focus.

Hold to the solid hope that even now God is working all things together to bring about that Final Day, when every tribe and tongue will praise the Name of Jesus, when He will wipe all tears from our eyes, when we will see Him face to face.

So: Runners, to your marks. Get set. Go!

Maintain Your Form and Finish Well in the Race of Faith

(This sermon on 2 Timothy 4:6-8 was preached 8/24/2008. For a version that is easier to print, click here. The audio is available here.)

Many expected the Beijing Olympic marathon to be slow, as runner after runner would succumb to the pollution on top of high heat and humidity. So when this morning the leaders took off at close to world record pace, a number of runners – including the top Americans, Dathan Ritzenheim and Ryan Hall – decided around three miles that that was suicidal, and backed off, hoping to run a slower, more even pace, and pick off stragglers. Such tactics had worked well in a number of past Olympic marathons.

But not today. Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya had other plans. He had prepared for these conditions. When the day dawned quite clear for Beijing, he was confident he could run a fast pace all the way to the end.

And he did. With a little over two miles to go he picked up the pace – and immediately dropped his last competitor. Running smoothly, relaxed and strong, he entered the stadium with a large lead. The crowd roared, cheering him on. He celebrated as he ran the last quarter mile on the track. Sammy Wanjiru finished well.

Our question this morning: Will you also finish well?

To get the gold medal, you have to finish the race. The marathon is 26 miles 385 yards. If you stop at 26 miles, 384 yards, you do not win – no matter how far ahead you are at that point. (more…)

Staying Alert in the Race

In tomorrow’s sermon, I’ll be referring to the race that is shown beginning 3:25 into this video – the 1954 Commonwealth Games mile final, between the first two sub-four minute milers, Roger Bannister and John Landy. Look carefully at Landy’s head as Bannister pulls up beside him.

Interval Training and Witnessing

(For a version of this devotion that is easier to print, follow this link.)

In Sunday’s sermon (text, audio), I discussed my love-hate relationship over the years with interval training – running a set distance fast, repeatedly, with a short, timed rest between runs. In my high school and college days, I hated these workouts; I worked hard at them only because I knew they were necessary if I were to improve as a runner. Yet by the time I was 35, I had grown to love interval training. It was still painful – perhaps more so at age 35 than at 20. But I came to love the mental discipline of pushing myself through the pain, of maintaining good form despite tiring legs, of completing a hard workout well.

In our sermon discussion Tuesday morning, Albert brought up a particularly helpful application of this idea in our Christian lives: Many of us know that we should share our faith. We want to be people who witness. And yet we also don’t want to do so. We fear rejection; we think we won’t know what to say, or how to answer questions. So we too end up with a love-hate relationship with witnessing.

My attitude towards interval training changed when I began to see those workouts as a fulfillment of my identity has a runner. A runner is mentally tough. A runner does have control over his weakening legs. A runner will experience pain, but will nevertheless continue and overcome the temptation to quit.

We, too, need to see the sharing of our faith as the fulfillment of who we are as Christians, as those who delight in Jesus above all things. Consider: (more…)

Beth on the Race of Faith

My sweetheart Beth has been elaborating on the present sermon series on her blog. Here is an excerpt from one of her posts. Read the whole thing:

Will my children remember their mother reading the Bible consistently? Will they picture in their minds a straw basket with Bible, Valley of Vision prayer book, journal, and prayer notebook? Will they picture their mother swinging gently on the porch swing, Bible in hand or curled up in the wing chair in the music room, head bowed. Will it be a consistent memory?

It is certainly not just for the memory in my children’s minds that this consistency is important. Oh no. It is vitally important for now, for every day, for wisdom and discernment, for knowledge and understanding, for contentment and spurring on. It is as vital to my life as an Olympic athlete’s consistent training is. No, it is more vital. Because, unlike the Olympic athlete who may only take his gold medal as far as the grave, the benefits of consistency in walking with God are eternal.

Coty said in the sermon, “consistency makes a statement to yourself, ‘I am a child of God‘.” That’s who I am. Spending time in the word is simply what a child of God does, like running is what a runner does. I can’t live without it.

Train Through Pain Yet with Joy for the Race of Faith

(This sermon on 2 Timothy 2:3 was preached 8/3/2008. For a version that is easier to print, click here. The audio is available here.)

Have you ever stepped out in faith? Have you ever made a hard decision, decided, “Yes I will follow God!”? What happened next?

We love stories like that which continue: “And it didn’t seem possible, but by God’s grace I was able to do it!”

Praise God for such stories. Praise God for that way of displaying His faithfulness.

But do you also love stories that proceed differently? What if the rest of the story is: “I fell flat on my face.” Or “there was a great deal of pain and suffering, and no success that I could discern.”

Think of the Apostle Paul in that regard.

Paul wrote his 2nd letter to Timothy from prison. He was cold. Several former co-laborers were now ashamed of him; they did not want to have their names associated with him. So they deserted him. At his preliminary trial, no one came to his defense. He knew his legal case was hopeless; his execution would come soon.

His is not a story that, on the face of it, inspires confidence. Indeed, Paul even reminds Timothy of his persecutions and sufferings.

But he doesn’t say, “I’ve made mistakes in being too public, in irritating religious and government officials, in inviting persecution. Be careful to avoid persecution so you can have a fruitful ministry.”

Quite the contrary. He says, “all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). And he tells him:

Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God (1:8).

Furthermore, he tells him, “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3).

Paul tells Timothy to expect pain and, in a sense, to embrace suffering.

What should we expect in our own lives?

Surely we should expect that pain and suffering are a normal part of some Christians’ lives. That much is clear. But Christians over the years have made at least two big mistakes when thinking about pain.

· Some have said: “Pain is a necessary step to becoming like Christ. So I should pursue pain! I should seek pain.” With this in mind, over the centuries, some have whipped themselves, or sat on poles, or gone to other extremes. That is NOT the biblical message.

· Much more prominent in our country today is the second mistake: That is, saying, “Of course, Paul suffered, Jesus suffered, and Timothy was going to have to suffer. The political powers of their day opposed them. But today, we don’t face such persecution by our government, and God wants us to be free from pain. He wants us to prosper. Just believe! Have faith! And He will give you good success.”

This morning, I want to approach this subject of pain via the analogy between running and living the Christian life. For pain plays an important role in running. Someone who says, “My life should be free from pain; I should avoid anything that will cause me pain,” will never succeed as a runner. However, that’s also true of the one who seeks pain. He, too, will fail as a runner. (more…)

Running, Pain, and Joy

Check out this video to hear the best American marathoner, Ryan Hall, discuss the themes of tomorrow’s sermon: the parallels between the pain and joy of running, and the pain and joy of running the race of faith. The most relevant section begins at about the 11 minute mark.

(Edit Sunday 8/3: The section I quoted in this morning’s sermon begins about 5:25 into the interview)