Encouragement

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As a father, I have over the years often been implicated (I mean “involved”) in my kids’ various sports activities. As a result, I have often been left reflecting on my own athletic endeavors in the past. Let’s see. There was the time that I was running Track, tripped on my own feet and slammed my knee into the cinders and the cinders into my knee. The pain didn’t bother me so much but the spectacle I had made of myself very nearly caused me to die of embarrassment.

It didn’t help, of course, that the coach didn’t give tuppence about my injury even with the sight of blood gushing down my leg and mingling with the black cinders on the track. Incidentally, I’ve noticed that coaches don’t cater much to self-pity. Oh, well. At least I’ve got cinders still in my knee as a souvenir.

I remember too as an older teenager playing some two-on-two basketball and slam-dunking the ball through the hoop (with a little help from short stone wall nearby). I guess I should not have hung on the basket’s rim so long. Who would have guessed that the backboard might not have been designed for such abuse? As you might suppose, the game ended with my accidental destruction of the basket and backboard.

Then there was the time that I had just moved. It was my eleventh grade year at a new high school and I had just gotten up to bat in front of my new team. Maybe subconsciously hoping to impress my new coaches and teammates with how tough I was, I was immediately beaned with a fastball. “What a way to start the season,” I thought as I crashed backward from the impact of the ball. No pain, no gain, right?

Given my lack of athletic finesse, “Going for the Gold” was naturally never really a catch phrase for me until I began to understand that I indeed am an athlete… spiritually at least, if not also physically.

As Christians are we not “running a race”, a marathon run in which only perseverance brought forth from faith in Him can keep us going? Are we not “wrestling” today with powerful social and ideological opponents that watch us with shifting eyes, seeking to lay hold of us and topple us over with confusion and “pin us to the mat” with doubt? Are we not hoping to daily “score a goal” by holding forth Truth, so that someone will see His light of love and reach for the prize of eternal life?

Don’t assume that because “Rocky’s Theme” isn’t blaring every moment of every day that we may squander life as spiritual couch potatoes. Are you waiting for someone else to run into the ring? Hey, you! Put your gloves on and get in there!

And don’t get caught running on the wrong track! Can you see Him in your mind’s eye, this One Who shed His blood for you to receive the gift of eternal life? Coach and Team Manager, He’s also the Great Reward of those who will receive Him as Lord.

“…I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12b-14 ESV).

The race is on! The goal is before us! The starting gun has fired! Let’s get out there and win!

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27 ESV).

Perhaps you can even hear in your heart’s ear the crowd in Heaven as they roar their approval of those who start the race and then stick with it until finally reaching their goal – the goal of remaining true to Him until the end.

“…Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrew 12:1-2 ESV).

Copyright © Thom Mollohan.

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