Off & Running in the Race of Life

To be successful in running the race of set before us in this life, we must necessarily stay on the track and know where the finish line is! If we get off the track, we’ll certainly lose considerable time, a costly mistake when we only get to run our race once. To succeed, and post our personal best performance, we will need to train and to focus and to keep moving straight ahead toward the tape. We can’t afford to be distracted by the noise of the crowd or to look away even for a moment. The destination of the race is too important… it’s to our destiny! In this brief sequel to our last post, we’ll consider the first two of six tactics that are vital to running our race well.

We get on the track once we join the Master’s team. He immediately assigns us His Spirit as the Trainer that will be with us through the race and we’re off and running! Our Trainer runs as one with us. He recognizes the snares and entanglements that will trip us or slow us down, and coaches us on the tactics we’ll need to avoid them. He knows, personally, the length of the race as well as how we need to run to attain our personal best time. He knows the prize that waits for us and is totally committed to our winning it. He uses six basic training tactics, each designed to increase our strength and endurance as we stride, stride, stride, pant, stride… running… running our race…

Our first tactic is to develop and fight to hold the eternal perspective of life. Confusion about our ultimate purpose as children of God – eternal beings living on Earth only temporarily as Ambassadors for Christ – with the temporal values and perspectives of our worldly culture will always cause us to stumble. If we don’t gain and maintain clarity here, we’ll be easily distracted and confused and prone to veering off the track. God is sovereign and we are each unique and eternal beings – God’s workmanship – sent here to do eternally important things!

“We are not physical beings who have occasional spiritual experiences, we are spirit beings who are having a temporary physical experience.” T. DeChardin

We can never hear too often that this world is not our home. Its values aren’t our values. Don’t be deceived! There is no fellowship between light and darkness. No compromise between the eternal perspective of life and the worldly or fleshly perspective of life is insignificant! The fight to hold the eternal perspective is not a permanently won battle, but a continuing war. Unlike a basketball game where we can build an insurmountable lead, being Christ’s ambassador is more like a wrestling match where, even leading late in the match, we can still be pinned by our opponent if we lose focus. We’re still saved, but our eternal potential as His disciples is at stake.

The weapons of our warfare are found and honed by our efforts to develop and fight to build intimacy with Jesus. As we run, we need constant reinforcement and renewal as we encounter the snares and entanglements of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The wellspring of our continuing strength to run and win is our relationship with Jesus. Nothing is more important… not our ministry, our relationships, the things we do at church, the time we spend with family, and certainly not the things we do at work! Spending the time we need to build intimacy with Him is the most important thing we do. There is no hour in the day that’s more important than the time that we spend with Him. And the primary purpose of the time that we spend with Him is to learn to have Him present in our thoughts every moment of every day! Not for just one hour, but every minute of every hour! If Jesus is first in our lives, why not give Him the first hour of every day? Is He really first? Prove it. Live it!

Listen! There is no easy way to run a long race. Races are hard! No runner succeeds in running a long race without difficult and arduous training! We can’t even run a race, let alone run it well, without investing sweat, blood and tears! Sure, everything else on our plates scream for our attention! Of course there are competing pressures that come against us! It has been so forever, and every one of those who have run before us and finished their race successfully has had to fight just as hard. We have not, nor will we ever, develop through our modern technology or knowledge, an easy way to run the race of life in Christ. Never! (To be continued with Tactics 3 & 4).

Buck Jacobs, AfC
Founder & Chairman
The C12 Group: Building GREAT Business for a GREATER Purpose
America’s Leading Christian CEO Roundtable provider since 1992
www.C12Group.com