Pastor Tim Wood's Blog: Finish the race

Friday, September 17, 2010

Finish the race

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith".

These are Paul's words to Timothy from 2 Timothy 4:7. As I said last Sunday, this verse is not saying three things it's saying one thing; keep the faith. In order to keep the faith, we have to fight the good fight and we have to finish the race. So keeping the faith is hard. Sometimes we get knocked down but we get up. It's a fight but it's a good one. This fight is worth it because the faith is worth it. Keeping the faith is a race. It's not a dash it's a marathon. So we must endure to the end. We have to gut it out. We have to resist that urge to throw in the towel. But we finish, we endure, because the faith is worth it.

In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson writes these words:

Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. Our sense of reality has been flattened by thirty-page abridgments. It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terribly difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses it's novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

If you are weary from the race for your faith let these words from Scripture inspire you to keep going:

Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary. (Galatians 6:9)

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Cor. 15:58)

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:10)

Keep fighting for your faith, keep running the race because our faith in Christ is worth it.

I'm running with you and I am determined to finish the race.

Pastor Tim

# posted by Pastor Tim @ 5:18 AM