New Year - Run With Patience The Race!

New Year - Run With Patience the Race!

Resolution: Make Jesus Lord

As a new year is starting, some are making new year’s resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions may not be as popular as they once were but I think it’s still a good thing to do!

I want to encourage you to make a resolution this year to make Jesus the Lord of your life!

Maybe as we make these resolutions, we’ll remember these commitments to ourselves and to God.

Again, I want to encourage you to resolve to crucify the carnal self and let Jesus live in your life!

Marathon Runners in New York

We have gone on mission trips to New York and it’s always around the end of October.

One year we took a few extra days after the mission trip to tour New York before heading home.

We were in Manhattan and took the Overhead Cable car to Rockefeller Island and when we did we could see the New York Marathon runners below us. It was a huge stream of runners that we could see very far in both directions from overhead. It was a pretty cool site to see.

Of course, this reminds me of a Bible verse:

Heb 2:1,2

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

We really did feel like a cloud of witnesses to the runners below us! I can only imagine what it will be like someday when we get to heaven and get to be the witnesses spoken of in that verse and get to see those still here on Earth trying to run the race that God has set before them.

Did you realize that people in heaven may be watching you right now? This verse says that! Your ancestors in heaven? Your grandma, grandad, or even for some of you your mom or dad or brother or sister or uncle or aunt or friends or for some of you spouses that have passed on or other loved ones? It’s a little freaky to think they may be watching right now huh?

But, you know they are cheering you on and they want to see you do your best. I hope you will show God and show them you are trying to do your best for Jesus and running that race as best you can!

Resolutions:

Forget what is behind - Press on toward the goal - God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus

You have to run the right direction!

So are you ready to run? OK, let’s go! No, no, just kidding, I’ll get in trouble if yall are up running about! They’ll say who told you to do that and I’ll get into so much trouble!!!

No, I’m talking spiritually, running the race of life!

If you’re running without the Holy Spirit and you do not have your eyes fixed on Jesus, you’re doing it wrong! You’re running the wrong way! Turn around, repent right now!

Trusting in Jesus is the only way to be saved. He is the right way!

John 14:6 (I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!)

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus’ way is Better than Our way

But many times we want to go our own way and we deny God His way in our lives!

Surely, many of us realize that if we let go and let God have His wonder way in our lives, our lives would be so much better!

I lost some of you… You’ve started singing in your head, Let go and let God have his wonderful way! Yeah me too! It’s a great song.

GPS Navigation - are you getting off track in life?

So you know on your phone you can choose navigation and it will tell you where to go and inevitably you’ll miss your turn off and you’re going your own way. Then you hear that it’s trying to reroute. Sometimes it takes a while to get back on track, right?

So in real life, when you get off track, and you know your off track, why do you stay going the wrong way? Get your life back on track!

Still we want our own way, even knowing that’s a worse off way to be!

Stop, get some help!

What I want us to realize is that if we let go and let God have His wonderful way, our burdens will vanish, our night will turn to day… ;-) ;-) ;-)