Choices – Part 3
Choose The Right Race
Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Luke 8:22-25
Introduction
This is part three of my series “Choices.” I’ve titled this message “Choose the Right Race.” Our foundational Scripture from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 says, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus; not with uncertainty. Thus I fight; not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” In this Scripture Paul compare the Christian’s race to a sporting event. In part one I shared with you that “Our abilities to do something often do not start with our being able to do it; it starts with our choice to do it. Once the choice is made, the ability can come through training, discipline and preparation!” This is the essence of what Paul captured in these few verses. In part two, I shared with you that we must choose victory versus simple success. The difference between victory and success is the repeatability. If you are in a war, you will have success in battle until you reach the total victory and the battle is over. We often settle for successes, never expecting or experiencing total victory. It is a mindset. When we begin to choose victory, how we see the world around us and our specific situations will change. My example was the marathon runner who competes in a marathon but their goal is not to win, but a personal goal that they have assigned for themselves. In that situation when they have met their personal goal, they experienced success, but not the victory of winning the race and the prize attached to the race. As a Christian, we must run the race that God has given to each of us to run and we must focus on His prize, not a personal goal that we may set which may be far different from what God desires of us.
This morning I will focus on verse twenty-six and I ask you again to think about the race you’re running and if you’re running “your race” – the one that God has assigned you.
I. Competing With Certainty
In 1 Corinthians 9:26 Paul writes the following: “Therefore I run thus; not with uncertainty. Thus I fight; not as one who beats the air.” In verses 24 and 25 that we have discussed previously, Paul explains that everyone who competes does so for the prize yet only one can be the winner – the victor. He states that each participate is temperate in all things. What he is saying is that those who compete practice a lot of self-control and discipline even during the times when they are not actually in training for an event. Their lifestyle is one of always preparing and keeping their bodies ready. After he explains this, he transitions to his race. I want you to focus on the last part of the verse. After he states that this is how he was running his individual race, with discipline, self-control and focused on the prize assigned to his race, he said “not with uncertainty.” To be uncertain means that you’re know sure and you have doubts. Paul stated that he was running his race with surety – there was no doubt as to the race he was running the race assigned to him. Why is this important?
Let me give you the definition of the word perception. Perception is defined as “the mental grasp of objects; intuition or insight; the knowledge gotten through perceiving.” In short, a person’s perception becomes their reality. I think we all understand this. When we have a perception of something, we act and make decisions based on our own perception. Our perception becomes our reality. That sounds okay so far – it’s my perception and it’s my reality. Now, when I share my perception with someone else, and they believe and accept it, what happens? My perception/reality is now transferred to them. Their perception and thus their reality have now been influenced by me. The problem here is that my perceptions might be true for me, but it might not necessarily apply to the person I am talking to. Many Christians are trying to compete in a race that is not theirs because someone has told them that this is what they should do based on the other person’s perception of them.
Consider the stock crash of 1929. Overnight hundreds of thousands of people immediately began to withdraw all of their money from banks because of what they were being told by friends and family. The perception was that their money was no longer safe in the bank and they needed to have it in their hands. It started with one person telling another person and so on until masses of people were panicking. The banks of course did not keep every depositor’s deposit in cash at their bank location so they did not have enough cash on hand when people came in requesting to withdraw all of their money that they had in the banks. When people withdrew their money from the banks and business started defaulting on their loans (some figures show that almost 50% of the banks in the U.S. closed their doors during this time) many customers were left with no money at all because their deposits were not insured. The “run on the banks” happened because people perceived that their money was not safe in the banks. Their perception became their reality and they acted on that new reality. So what happened? Those who withdrew their money early were able to get all of their money back; those who came in late, some of them got nothing because when the banks exhausted their cash, they had to close their doors. Do you see this – how our perception impacts our beliefs and actions? After this initial run on banks happened, within four years there had been two more. President Franklin Roosevelt stopped a third run on banks in 1933 and in 1934 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was established. It guaranteed individual deposits up to $100,000. In 2008, President Bush increased the limit to $250,000. So if you have $250,000 in a bank that is backed by the FDIC, your money is safe, even if the bank closes its doors.
Let me give you an example from Scripture. Do you remember the story of Jesus calming the storm? Luke 8:22-25 records the following: “Now on one of those days Jesus and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, "Let us go over to the other side of the lake." So they launched out. But as they were sailing along He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger. They came to Jesus and woke Him up, saying, "Master, Master, we are perishing!" And He got up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm. And He said to them, "Where is your faith?" They were fearful and amazed, saying to one another, "Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?"
Some of the disciples were fishermen who had a lot of experience on the sea. When this storm arose, based on their “perception” of the type of storm this was, they calculated that they would die. Based on their knowledge of the sea and the vessel they were in, they perceived that they would not make it. They panicked and woke Jesus from His sleep telling Him that they were perishing. That was their perception and their reality. After Jesus calmed the storm and there was peace He asked His disciples “Where is your faith.” I believe that He had expected more from His disciples, especially since He was with them. Their perception was based on their experience, not on having Jesus in the boat beside Him. Do you know that oftentimes our perception of our situation is based on our experiences or the experiences of those around us? Do you know that sometimes those perception leave out the fact that Christ is always with us and that there is nothing that gets by Him? This is the certainty that we must have as we run our race: we must be certain that the race we are in is the race we are supposed to be running.
I told you earlier that there are people who are running a race that is not theirs. We often use the term “calling” when we think about the things that God wants an individual to do. God “called” me into the gospel ministry. God “called” me to be a trustee or deacon. “God “called” me to be in the music ministry. All of these could be true, but there is one calling that all of us have and that is to bring souls into the kingdom. That is the primary race we are running! When I am preaching God’s word, it’s about ultimately winning souls. When the choir sings, it about souls. When the trustees manage the money, it’s about souls. The Church is about saving souls! Do not get this twisted. It is not enough that you just go to Church faithfully and are a good member. You have a responsibility to tell others about Christ. Every Christian has this responsibility and the other things we do for the Lord are for this end. If you’re on a four person sprint team, you run you segment and yours only. You can’t run the whole race – you have to run your best in your segment of the race. This is what Christianity is all about – running our segment of the race the best we can. We have to win our individual battles and races so that the overall victory is achieved.
II. You’re Already In The Real Fight
In the last half of verse twenty-six Paul writes, “Thus I fight; not as one who beats the air.” This is a term relating to boxing. If you have ever watched a boxing match, they often show the boxers warming up. They are going through their motions and boxing the air – throwing punches at an imaginary foe. This is called “shadow boxing.” Shadow boxing is used to train the muscles before they are actually in the boxing ring. Paul made it clear that he was not shadow boxing. He was not punching the air as if in training. No, he was in a battle and the punches he was throwing were hitting their mark. He was talking about mentally transitioning from training “thinking” to understanding that we are actually in the fight. There is a difference when you’re training for a fight (or race) than when you’re actually in it. We have to understand that we are actually in the fight. When we accepted Christ, the fight started. We have had to learn some defensive moves as we have fought, but we are in the fight. We are not shadow boxing our enemy!
Good, professional boxers train every day. They do not wait until they are scheduled to fight an opponent to start getting in shape. They go through a routine of “general” training to keep their bodies fit. Once they have a fight scheduled, then they start the specific training against a specific opponent. This training involves them looking at “how” their opponent fight so that they can prepare their defense. They will prepare differently to fight a right handed fighter than one who leads with his left, a southpaw. This mentality applies to each of us. We must know the race we are in just as we need to know the opponent we are facing. We cannot enter into a fight without preparing our bodies and without knowing who we are fighting. When we are preparing for our fight we have to focus on our opponent – not someone else’s opponent. Again, we must fight our fight. When Paul was coming towards the end of his earthly life, he wrote to Timothy and told him the following: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7) This should be our profession when the time comes from us to leave this world.
III. Your Race/Fight, Your Prize
I want to close this morning going back to the beginning. I shared with you from the beginning that you need to choose to run your race. You cannot run my race; you must run your race. If you run my race you will not win the prize because the prize is assigned to the race and the one “qualified” to run that race. Please understand what I am telling you. My qualifications for my race are different than yours. The race that God has you running for Him is assigned to you. No one else can do it; it’s your race just like my race is mine to run. If I run it well and stay focused on the prize aligned to my race, I will win it. If I am running my race, but looking at your prize, I may run my race well, but still lose the prize because I was looking at a prize that was not aligned to my race. To win your prize you must compete in your race.
As I close this morning I want to share with you a commercial I saw this week on television that I think really speaks to what Paul captures in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. It was a car commercial. The commercial shows a father and son walking to their car after the son won a trophy. The father asks his son to show him the trophy. When the father looked at the trophy he became upset. His son had received a “participation” trophy. The father said, “we beat every team and we were number one and they get the same trophy?” He then rips the label off the trophy and wrote “champs” on it and gave it back to his son. It was the father’s opinion that if you participated and won, you should receive a prize indicating that you won.
We must stop accepting participation trophies! Let us focus on and win the ultimate prize – the one God has assigned to our race.
Will stand and repeat our confession from last week with me: 1 Corinthians 15:57 say “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Please repeat after me: I will run my race! I accept the victory that my Father has given me through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
