No Free Rides: Drop the Weights and Run to Win Your Race

Sermon outline

Life is a race with a finish line, and you win it by refusing to quit: lay aside the people and weights that slow you down, keep your eyes on the prize, and expect God's favour to meet you along the way.

1. Run to win: just keep on running

   Paul says all run but one receives the prize, so do not run blindly: run to obtain. Life is a race that began the day you were born, and God does not want you to quit, give up or get discouraged. Everyone who made it big had the opportunity to be discouraged and kept running. Do not worry about those who dislike you or took advantage of you. They will reap what they sow, and God has someone in your path this year who will be kind to you and connect you to the right things.

   Illustration: He was an athlete from a small boy to high school. In class two another boy beat him to the tape in the short dashes for three years, so he switched to longer races and began to win. In high school he ran the 400, 800 and 1,500 metres, and at about 12 to 14 he ran 20 kilometre races with his older brother and finished in the top ten. When the body gets tired, only a strong mind keeps you going.

   “Sometimes when you fail, it doesn't mean to say that you're a failure. It means switch your strategy.”

   • 1 Corinthians 9:24
   • Galatians 6:7

2. How life is like a race

   He gives his points on how life is like a race. One, life has a challenging course with many ups and downs, and as a Christian your challenges become greater. Two, life has a judge who decides where we take our place at the end: not a judge in the wrong sense, but a heavenly Father who is watching and will declare you the winner. Three, life has a finish line called death or the rapture, whichever comes first. The world is running with no future, but the believer's future is a blessed life now and heaven after.

   Illustration: If he were to paint a picture of God, he says, God is standing there cheering you on and telling you that you can make it.

   “Don't just exist. Don't just live and die. But make a mark on your generation.”

3. Lay aside every weight: no free rides this year

   The cloud of witnesses is the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, looking on and cheering: if they could make it, you can. The weights to lay aside are often people: family, friends and long attachments that cling, manipulate and control. For 2011 some relationships must be cut back. God called you to disciple people, share the Word with them and motivate them, not to put them on your back. Establish boundaries, because God is taking you to "a place called there", your destiny, and you will not get there carrying people.

   Illustration: As athletes they bought the lightest vest, shorts, tackies and spiked shoes to gain two or three seconds off the blocks. He also tells of a tortoise that gave a snake a ride across the river on its promise not to bite. As they reached the other bank the snake bit it and said, "I'm sorry, but it's in my nature to bite."

   “God didn't tell you to put them on your back and ride with them.”

   • Hebrews 12:1
   • Hebrews 11

4. Finish your course: what the world calls winning and what the church calls winning

   Paul said boldly that he had fought a good fight, finished his course and kept the faith, and that a crown was laid up for him. There is a day when God will reward you for the people you ministered to who were ungrateful. The world thinks winning is intelligence, wealth, image and power, and that is wrong thinking. For the believer, winning is finishing. Christ purchased your salvation, so do not let friends, family, people at work, disappointment or setbacks stop you serving God. Bad things do happen to good people, but all things work together for good.

   Illustration: At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, about an hour after the race was won, a runner came into the stadium bruised and battered from a fall, dead last. Asked by a reporter why he did not quit, he said his country had not sent him 7,000 miles to quit but to finish the race.

   “If you have a setback, just make a comeback.”

   • 2 Timothy 4:7-8
   • Proverbs 11:25
   • Romans 8:28
   • Ecclesiastes 9:11

5. Feed people, do not carry them, and let God's goodness deal with the rest

   As the prophet put flour in the pot and what was deadly became fit to eat, Jesus the bread of life can turn around whatever was meant to destroy you. You in turn become bread for others, feeding them words of life. God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, so do not be discouraged when evil people prosper: his goodness is giving them time to repent. If he is good to them, how much more to his own child. He tells young people that God has a job and the right partner for them, and warns them not to help God out in desperation and give birth to an Ishmael.

   Illustration: You are sitting at the robot in your old skorokoro when a big Mercedes-Benz pulls up and you know the driver is a drug dealer, and you ask God when you will get yours.

   “I'm not asking you to carry people. I'm asking you to feed people.”

   • 2 Kings 4:38-41
   • John 6:35
   • John 8:12
   • Matthew 5:14
   • John 6:63
   • Matthew 5:45
   • Romans 2:4
   • Genesis 16:1-4
   • Genesis 24
   • Romans 9:16

6. Hope is an anchor: get better, not bitter, and recognise your day of favour

   When people hurt you, you can get bitter or better. Bitterness makes you cynical, and a cynical person fails to recognise favour when God visits, so keep a childlike spirit and let go. He decrees favour over the church with banks, authorities, employers and neighbours, and says the power that heals the sick through the laying on of hands is the same power that draws miracles of favour. The Hebrew word for hope, tikvah, means a cord, from a word for binding together like a braided rope, the word translated "wait" in Isaiah 40:31. You are bound to the promises of God.

   Illustration: Booking flights to the United States, he asked about three nights in Dubai on the way home and was quoted 2,500. He gave the agent a Faith Chronicle, she said she was a Christian, looked at the prices again and gave him the Dubai stay free, though he had not asked for a preacher's discount. He also trusts God for a parking bay wherever he goes, and tells of a young man in the church who was left a house by an uncle who had not much liked him.

   “You're not bound by the devil. You're bound by the promises of God.”

   • Hebrews 6:19
   • Luke 19:44
   • Isaiah 40:31

7. The wrong way to run, number one: don't run religiously without power

   He closes with five ways to run wrongly. The first is to run with a form of godliness while denying its power. Jesus told the religious people of his day that they erred because they did not know the scriptures or the power of God, and God wants us to know his power.

   “Don't run religiously without power.”

   • 2 Timothy 3:5
   • Matthew 22:29

8. Number two: don't run from your enemies

   Lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees. The spies saw giants and were grasshoppers in their own sight. God is teaching us not to run from our enemies but to turn around and face them. He says he was once intimidated to face enemies and now is fearless, because God has not given us a spirit of fear.

   “Not scared, not intimidated. I have the power of Christ within me.”

   • Hebrews 12:12
   • Numbers 13:33
   • 2 Timothy 1:7

9. Number three: don't run with your enemies

   People who only tolerate you sap your strength, your vision and the anointing, so go to people who love and celebrate you. As their pastor he thinks the best of his people and values each one as a person, not by their clothes, car or money, because everyone is important in the economy of God. The good life God has put in you is a nothing missing, nothing broken life, and you can decide to enjoy it without money in your hands.

   Illustration: Drive through an informal settlement and watch the children playing with an old tyre: they have decided to enjoy life.

   “Go to people that love you. Go to people that celebrate you.”

   • Galatians 5:7

10. Number four: don't run away from God

    If you get caught up in sin, faults and failures, bounce back. Church is not a place to hide from God but the place where you run to him. That is why there is an altar: so that when you mess up you can come and receive his forgiveness and mercy.

    “A clean child doesn't need a bath. It's a dirty one that needs a bath.”

11. Number five: don't run ahead of God

    Abraham pleaded that Ishmael might live before God, and it grieved him when Sarah said the son of the bondwoman must go. But Isaac could not go where God intended while Ishmael was there. Each of us has an Ishmael that we love and cling to. Let it go, so that the seed of the promise can be fruitful and the things that were passing you by can gravitate towards you.

    “You've got to let some Ishmaels go in your life.”

    • Genesis 17:18
    • Genesis 21:9-11