Are You Running Your Best Race?
For the last two weeks my family and I have been watching the Olympics. Both my husband and my daughter were athletes at one time. So, they really have a healthy respect for what the athletes are going through as they compete to bring gold medals back to their country. Most of them have worked their entire lives for this big win.
The track and field events are especially captivating to me. To see the athlete’s strain and push themselves beyond what they could have even imagined in some cases, is really something to witness. Talking about leaving it all on the field, nothing could be truer for these athletes. At the end of the races that we have been watching, most of these elite athletes collapse from sheer exhaustion. They truly exert everything within themselves to win.
My question for you today is are you giving it your all? Are you using every bit of your strength and energy to achieve what God has called you to do? Are you taking your assignment as seriously as these athletes are taking their assignments? When God calls you home, will you cross the finish line all used up from faithfully pursuing the work that He has placed you on this earth to do, or will you cross over rested because you chose to be a spectator instead of a participant?
Today I want to challenge you to run the race that God has placed before you purposefully with passion and fervor. Choose to honor God by using up every drop of all that He has poured into you. There will be no gold medal when you cross the finish line, but there will be a jeweled crown and the words well done my good and faithful servant, and that my friend is worth more than the gold of a million medals.
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
Hebrews 12:1
12 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,2 Timothy 4:7
7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
