The Race

If you were like me as a kid, you liked to race against your friends. It didn’t matter if it was a foot race, a bicycle race, an eating contest, a drinking contest, racing while doing the bear crawl, or racing while doing the crab walk; we enjoyed racing, but even more, we enjoyed winning. The sad part is that we didn’t really win anything, but we did gain bragging rights.

As a follower of Christ, the spiritual race is nothing like the races we used to contend in. In a physical race, you were able to take a break. Go home, eat, go to bed, and if you want to do it again the next day, you could. But in the spiritual race, we really don’t get the opportunity to take time off to rest. Once we accept Jesus as our Savior and Lord, the race begins. Oh sure, we can go to retreats or conferences to get our spiritual legs underneath us, but those are momentary, and what we are doing is just preparing to run the race better and stronger. There is no break in running the Christian race if we run rightly. In a worldly race, there is a finish line that can be seen, or at least we know it’s going to end at some point. Not so in the spiritual race. We do know there is a finish line, but we do not cross it till we enter our heavenly home. None of us really knows when that is going to happen.

The Apostle Paul gives us great words of encouragement when it comes to our spiritual race. In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul writes this, “Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” The great Apostle Paul understood three things when it comes to this spiritual race. First, he hasn’t reached the goal yet, and neither have we. Second, we must forget all our past sins and failures if we are going to run the race well. If we have repented, the Lord has forgiven us, and the past then just becomes a heavy weight that we drag around, keeping us from racing the way we should. Third, we must never give up; we must continue to reach and grasp ahead to the goal. What is the goal, you may ask? It is the goal to be more and more like Jesus every day.  You may say, “I thought heaven was the goal?” No, heaven is the reward; the goal is to allow ourselves to be so transformed into the likeness of Jesus that people will want to have what we have. The winning of souls is the goal we continue to press toward.

So, my beloved, don’t give up. When you think that you can’t run anymore, get up, dust yourself off, and run the race once again. Push and strive to become more like Jesus. NO, we will not achieve that goal down here, but that should never stop us from trying, from running the race.