3. AIM CLEARLY (vs. 26)

            Paul says, “I run in such a way as not without aim.”  I saw a lady in a track meet win her race by several yards but be disqualified because she ran out of her lane for a period.  It is too easy to be distracted, to be unclear about what really matters, to miss the importance of commitment and sacrifice, or to forget that trying too many things is at least as bad in its outcome as trying too few things.  These kinds of things disqualify too many.  Aim means the eliminating of everything but the objective of your aim.  Are there a few things at which you are aiming?  What strategy are you employing to reach them?  Is your aim and strategy in writing? (It should be.)  Is it clear and really important to you? (It should be.)  How about to others?  To try too little is to guarantee a small outcome. To try everything is to guarantee that you will do nothing well.  Aim in order to win.

4. GIVE UP THE RIGHT TO FEEL GOOD IN THE SHORT TERM (vs. 27)

            It’s a sad part of the human condition that we let happiness matter more to us than winning.  Look at the face of the man who scores the winning touchdown.  Happy?  You bet.  Look at that same face when he’s been at practice for two hours in the hot sun and his coach is in his face yelling at him.  Happy?  Not at all.  Yet without paying the price of seemingly thankless preparation, he would not have won.  All the most important things in life require not just self-discipline but self-sacrifice.  That’s the point of verse 27.  Want a great marriage when you’re 60?  Self-sacrifice will be required now.  Want great kids when they’re 35?  More self-sacrifice.  Want great standing when you retire among your peers?  More self-sacrifice.  You have to be prepared to sacrifice good feelings, relaxation, and contentment in the present to be able to win at something in the future.  Nobody gets to the Promised Land on an escalator.  Everybody has to walk over sharp rocks at times.  Part of getting there is being willing to pay that price.

            I hope this helps in your developing a winning strategy.

            No one can win at everything nor can anyone win all the time at anything.  But everyone can plan to win. You could substitute the word “succeed” for the word “win” and the above sentence would have similar truth, but maybe you would feel it was more applicable.  That’s what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.  A study of that text is a pretty good way to develop a winning strategy.

1. DEVELOP YOUR LIFE AROUND THE DESIRE TO SUCCEED/WIN ( vs. 24)

                       Paul contrasts the “also ran” with the “really ran.”  Some enter a race just to get a   t-shirt; others to win.  It’s the “really ran” that Paul commends.  It’s not winning that is commended but the intent to win and running in such a way that you can win.  There are races that are purely optional.  Nobody has to play golf, and some of the happiest golfers I know don’t care whether they win or not.  However, when you get married, have a child, take a job, or become a Christian, your “just    finishing” is not an option.   You need to succeed at these big things in life and you can do it, but it starts by saying to yourself, “I will not be an ‘also ran.’ I want to learn to win at this.”

2. CONTROL YOURSELF (vs. 25)

             Paul says the Christian life is about eternity, so we should be at least as determined as a man who wants a trophy, gold medal, or check.  This verse commends “self-control.”  This is a concept many skip, but no one who wins     skips it.  I see people fail at self-control because they would rather feel good now or they would rather shift the responsibility to an accountability partner.  You can often find such a person who will “hold you accountable,” but if you want to win,  you must learn to take that responsibility yourself.  To be sure, we all have periods when an accountability partner is essential and important, but most of the time it’s like having somebody else do your homework.  If you expect your wife  to see to it that you become a good husband or father or your husband to see to it that you become a good wife or mother, you are shirking your responsibility and diminishing your chance of success.  So if you need an accountability partner in     the short-term for some special need, God bless you for doing what it takes.  But God expects “SELF-control” of His people, and if you’re going to win at any important aspect of your life, it is an essential element.

(to be continued)

In a sermon a few weeks ago I made the offhand remark that parents should teach their children to win with grace and lose with faith.  Elizabeth Gibbons’ thoughtfully asked through e-mail, “I understand winning with grace, but how can we lose with faith?”  This is a great question for us all, and I want to spend the next several columns fleshing out my too brief e-mail answer to Elizabeth’s question.  So thanks, Elizabeth, for listening critically and asking a really helpful question.  In the next several blogs I will cover:

1. Winning with Grace         
2. Having a desire to win
3. Having a worthwhile goal
4. Developing a strategy for winning
5. Taking responsibility with gratitude
6. Losing with Faith
7. Things worth losing
8. Possessing the faith to learn from a loss
9. Winners lose without becoming losers

             Our text for these blogs will be I Corinthians 9:24, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize?  Run in such a way that you may win.”  This verse is not just about winning at sports but about the importance at winning at life and, in particular, winning at the Christian life. 

 WIN WITH GRACE BY HAVING THE DESIRE TO WIN

            One of my favorite questions to ask ministers in interviews is, “How competitive are you?”  I enjoy asking the question because only about two in a hundred are comfortable with whatever answer they give.  What I’d love to hear is, “I’m competitive.  I like to win.”  Most of them are apologetic about wanting to win, even if they do, as if the desire to win were some kind of a character flaw.  God speaks to us through Paul and makes it clear that Christians are to develop the desire and ability to win at whatever game they enter. 

             Look at 1 Corinthians 9:24 again.  Obviously, running is a command which means it is neither natural nor universal to do so.  You must choose both to enter the race and to run.  It also means that in the games you enter, you are to expend all the energy and effort you have in order to try to win.  For the Christian life, he is saying, “Don’t just get in the race to get a T-shirt, get in to win.”  Today because so many people want everyone to feel affirmed we diminish the importance of winning so no one will feel like a loser when they don’t win.  According to this passage of Scripture, anyone who takes winning casually at marriage, church, school, business, friendship, or following Christ is destined to lose.  We will see in a later column that this doesn’t mean you have to win, but it does mean you must run in order to win. 

             So, do you want to win with grace?  That’s the first step – wanting to.  If you just want to be in the game or if you want someone else to do the hard work and the heavy lifting, stop right now and ask God to give you the desire to run the races in your life in order to win.

             There is also a big difference between regulating what becomes legal and regulating personal behavior.  When the county makes something legal, its proponents will say – that makes it ok.  I want to make sure that the law approves as few harmful practices as possible.

             We are going through a stage right now in our culture where legislators don’t want to raise taxes but they need more money. An easy way to do this is through allowing and taxing gambling.  We have had widespread gambling in the past.  Ride out Devine Street and Garner’s Ferry Road and you’ll see near the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation an historical marker indicating there was a horse track where the children’s home now stands.  Further out by the VA Hospital there was another one.  That one belonged to Wade Hampton.  So we have had organized gambling in this state in the past.  We don’t have it now because back then we discovered that while it looks like fun, it’s actually quite harmful.  The human cost exceeds the human value. Right now it’s back on the upswing, and it will take awhile before we see the error of our ways and again restrict it.  However, I think it is important to take a stand and raise the issue wherever it makes sense.  The human cost is still too high.

             I’m convinced we struggle with it for two reasons, both of which are variations on pride. 

1.  I’m too proud to admit I can bring nothing to God that He would find worthwhile enough to exchange my effort for some kind of favorable treatment.  Yet, the Bible makes it plain that our righteousness (works) is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).  Imagine that God comes to your house, and as a welcome gift you give Him a sack full of rags that you used to wipe your hands after you changed the oil.  We don’t want to admit it, but that’s how our works look to God.  The only work He honors for salvation is the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  The basis for His favor is His love, mercy, and grace.  This is not a putdown to us but a tremendous source of assurance because God is reliable and unchanging and I am unreliable and changeable.
2.  I’m also too proud to admit that God doesn’t want my help in changing me.  To prove He doesn’t, He calls us dead (Ephesians 2:1), helpless (Romans 5:6), and tells us salvation is grace (pure gift) from start to finish (Romans 1:16-17).  Why, then, when we get sick do we double our church attendance, give more, and clean up our act as if God wouldn’t take care of our health unless we did more to get His attention?  God expects us to act like we belong to Him, but that belonging is His doing and my work or action is done only in response to the gift I have been freely given.  It is much more joyful to work for God because we’ve already been paid in full.  We don’t need to wheedle out of Him what it turns out He’s already given.  If He already loved the people who nailed Jesus to the cross while they were doing it, what do you honestly think you can do to earn more of His love for yourself?  I don’t go home at night hoping Patty will love me.  I go home because I’m already sure she does. 

             Can you give up the prideful and disconcerting notion that God requires you to do something to improve the level of His love for you?  Your Christian life will be a lot more joyful when you understand the assurance of the power of grace.

When you have trouble keeping your mind on your Bible reading, praying, or on a sermon (never happens at Shandon – right?), here are a few tips:

1) Don’t expect too much of yourself.  When you do, in any field of endeavor -including time with God – it leads to short-term trying harder and a long-term sense of failure frequently followed by quitting.  There are parts of Scripture that are fascinating.  There are prayer needs that are riveting.  There are others that are common and everyday but still important.  Set a level of focus that is fairly normal, and if you fall below that normal level of focus, make yourself go back and start again as a discipline. 

 2) Tell yourself you’re going to have to pass a pop quiz on this passage and make yourself pay attention to the details.  While you pay attention to the details, you may be surprised at the inspiration that pops out of the page at you. 

3)  When your mind wanders during prayer, just stop.  Say, “Lord, excuse me for just a moment.”  Pick up a paper and pen or pencil and write out the distraction you have.  Then you won’t forget it and you’ll be able to go back to it and deal with it when you’re through with prayer.  As soon as you’re finished jotting down a note, just start talking with God again when you were interrupted.

4) Ask yourself, “Why am I bored with this passage of Scripture or this prayer need?”  Maybe you need to eliminate that prayer for a time.  That’s ok to do.  With Scripture, maybe you don’t have any idea why it was written in the first place.  (For example: law, genealogies.)  You can also find out from a Bible dictionary why that Scripture was written such as Nelson’s New Bible Dictionary (the best one-volume, Bible dictionary I know of at this point).  That has helped me, at times, to make difficult passages more interesting.  Also, I’ve been really rewarded by puzzling over something that is in Scripture for years (like genealogies) and finally getting it.  As one man said to me, “I wouldn’t spoil your search to understand the genealogies by telling you why they were written for anything.”  Twenty-five years later, I’m glad Dr. Nelson didn’t give me a quick and easy answer, and I’m glad the Lord made me puzzle about it.  I’m not going to tell you why either.

             Our church is growing numerically in both the Sunday school and the worship service.  We’re having the highest number of visitors that we have had in a long time right now, both first-time visitors and total visitors.  Our giving is ahead of budget as you’ve been able to see in the newsletter.  All of this is just wonderful.  Let’s be sure to thank the Lord for this and express our gratitude to Him.  I wanted also to express my gratitude to you because the way you are stewards of the life the Lord has given you is making a big difference in the way our church is working right now.  

             It is wonderful to be your pastor.  I love seeing God work in my life and in your lives.  I look forward to seeing God continue to have His way with us in the days ahead.

Sunday’s message (April 11) raised thoughtful questions from a couple of church members. They indicated that the three circles diagram, as it relates to the family, was helpful but wondered how they could go about moving from one circle to the other or how they could encourage a spouse to move from one circle to the other.

             First make sure you are interested in your own level of involvement before you become interested in your spouse’s.  The parable of the mote and the beam (Matt. 7:3) is instructive here.  All of us need to be committed spouses and none of us are as committed as we need to be.  So pay attention to the person you see in the mirror before you pay attention to the person sitting across the table from you.  The beam in our own eyes always needs some work.

             As to how you go about moving yourself in the direction you should go, let’s look at I Corinthians 2:14 – 3:3.  These verses describe three spiritual positions.  The first is the position of the natural man. He is lost, separated from Christ, and does not have the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14).  The second position is the man of flesh or the carnal Christian (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).  This man is born again and will go to heaven when he dies but is centered in himself rather than in the Lord.  The third position is the spiritual man (I Corinthians 2:15-16) who is centered in the Spirit of God and has the mind of Christ.  In order to move from being the natural man to being a Christian, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  In order to move from being a carnal Christian to being a spiritual Christian, you must surrender to the Lordship of Christ.  The natural man does not have Christ.  The carnal man does not have Lordship.  The spiritual man has Jesus Christ as Lord because he is willing to do anything the Lord wants.

             The same principles apply to the family and your level of involvement. The person who is an interested spouse and has been one for a while may be a person who has gotten comfortable in being a carnal Christian (focused primarily on flesh/self) or he may be a person who is lost and separated from Christ.  Only you can know which condition you are in.  If you are lost, in order to move beyond being a merely interested spouse to involved, make sure you are born again.  Can you be specific about the time you repented of your sins and received Christ through faith?  Are you trusting good religious feelings (which EVERYBODY has) or are you trusting the Lord?  If you are born again, sincerely ask the Lord to help you focus on your wife and children more than on yourself.

             The involved spouse is frequently a high level carnal Christian.  He is interested in what he can do for the family in his own power.  His motives are excellent, but his methods and means are lacking.  His methods are not generated by the Holy Spirit.  It isn’t that he doesn’t have a good heart, it is that he doesn’t have the power of God in order to carry out the desires of his heart.  That’s why oftentimes he finds his efforts to be less than joyful.  So the person who is the involved spouse, who I am assuming has been born again, needs to surrender to the Lordship of Christ by telling God you surrender to Him and are willing to do whatever He wants you to do.  Ask God to give you the power of His Spirit and to show you how to live the Christian life in your family in the power of Christ.  The surrendered spouse is the “committed” spouse.  He (she) is the person who has received Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord and is walking in the Lordship and in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. 

             Whatever change needs to occur in your life begins with prayer and proceeds by continuous prayer.  To ask the Lord to do this work in your life is very important, and this goes both for which stage of church life you are in or which stage of family life you are in.  I hope this helps. 

             I’m going to speak to that this coming Sunday and perhaps that will make it even clearer.  I’m grateful for the interest shown by the two people who asked me this question.  I love hearing from you.  I pray God’s blessings on you getting to the committed core in both the church and family, the two most important teams in your life.

When I came to faith in Christ and my life began to change, the Lord gave me a real heart for lost friends.  All of mine but one were lost.  One in particular was my hunting, fishing, and dating friend from high school named Bill.  I couldn’t wait to get home so I could talk with him about Jesus.  The week before I went home I prayed daily and had some church friends do the same.

             When I got to Tallahassee I went to his house and asked him if we could go to his room.  He sat on his bed and I sat on the floor.  I began saying something like, “Something has happened to me, and although it is new it is also really wonderful.  I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, and He is truly changing my life.”

             The look on his face changed from pleasant to not so pleasant.  He looked at me and said, “Why are you telling me this?”  I said, “I don’t know.  I know your family is Baptist, but we have never discussed Christ in any way, so I figured you were Baptist like I was Episcopalian – in name only.”  “Well, I’m not.  I’m ok.”  It was pretty much the end of the conversation, and it put a real chill on our relationship for quite a while.

             Surprisingly enough I didn’t feel like a failure at the time, although the strain hurt me because Bill had been a friend of mine since cub scouts (and we still are friends.)  I did feel like I had done what the Lord would have me do and that I needed to leave the results to God.  With occasional twinges of regret, that’s what I did.

             Can you imagine the joy several years later when I heard from him that as a law student in Birmingham, Alabama, he had prayed to receive Christ? Now we were brothers in Christ.  It was also a real relief because all signs of the strain between us were gone.

             I remember at the time thinking it could be difficult to win a friend to Christ who had done so many non-Christian things with me and who would remember me much more in that light than he would in the new light of Christ and that if it put a strain on our relationship or indeed if I lost a friend but he eventually came to faith in Christ, it would be worth the strain.  I think that was the right calculation. Sometimes I think that I and the rest of us take the other side of the calculation – that I would rather maintain a friendship than alienate someone even for a time by seeking to share my faith with them.

             I hope you are thinking about who you can share your faith with, that you will share prayerfully, and that you will leave the results of your sharing to God.  God bless you as you develop the harvest mind and as you apply it to the people God has put in your life.

I had not been a Christian for long when I heard a pastor preach a sermon in which he put people down who came to church on Easter and Christmas and made it very plain that God’s true people were the people who came all the time.  I was very bothered by it at the time.  I felt somewhat good about the fact that I was an all-the-timer.  However, I was bothered about it because I thought about the number of times I went to church on Easter and at Christmas and felt very special about it and actually felt a touch of God.  I wondered how I would have felt if I had been at that stage and had heard him basically congratulate himself and all the regular attendees.  Now that I have had time to grow in my faith, I realize all that was wrong with that outlook. 

             Christianity is very different from Judaism in that Christianity is a faith composed of insiders who are committed to outsiders.  When we become a community of insiders committed to insider-ism, we become something Christianity has never been nor will ever be designed to do.  I certainly would never want to talk about Easter/Christmas attendees as being an ideal.  But to have unkind feelings or have the feeling that we are somehow special rather than people who are most fortunately graced by our great God is a denial of the truth.  We were all sinners when we were called.  We remain redeemed sinners in our calling, and when we go to heaven to finally be glorified and perfected, it will all be by the great grace of God. 

             Let us respond this Easter and every week to those who have not yet embraced our faith with a profound understanding that we are saved by the grace of God and by that alone, not by our inherent goodness. Let us grant to them a joyful welcome, letting them know we love and appreciate them.  Yes, they will probably get the idea that we really need them and will be lucky to have them and they’ll never really understand that that is not true until they come to Christ themselves and recognize what they’ve missed all their lives.  God bless you.  Happy Easter.  Let’s do all we can.