Be in it to Win it -Part 2

Last week we looked at Hebrews 12 and running with perseverance and endurance.

Heb 12:1-3
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honour beside God’s throne.  Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.

Run with perseverance the race marked before us.

Perseverance and endurance; living life for the long haul are important characteristics of living life well. We have looked at getting rid of the extra baggage, those things that get in the way and cause us to stumble, the things that hold us back; we looked at wearing the right clothes, putting off the old and dressing with love and kindness etc. And we looked at focusing ahead on what is ahead and not what is behind.

This week we will look at making it through the quit zone.

What is the quit zone?

It’s that place we all get to when we have to push forward, push harder, do those last things and not giving up when it gets hard. In a marathon, the runners go through what they call the quit zone, or the wall; that part of the race towards the end where they think they can’t go any further. But when they push through it, they run better and they finish well.

"There's something about quitting that hurts your spirit.  It's demoralizing.  I know we're all tired of the humanist mantra, "Believe in yourself!!!"  But there comes a time when you have to just stop telling yourself you can't do it.  When you give up, when you don't cross the finish line, when you throw in the towel....it's a discouragement that sticks with you.  It'll make it harder to keep going next time.  Lots harder. And life is not supposed to be easy.  Difficulty is part of life.  We're all going to face situations that seem impossible.  But for me, when I have proved to myself in even just one area of my life (running, for instance) that I can do it, that I can push through it even when the hills are steep, when things are hard...it makes me feel stronger to meet whatever else life will send my way. - See more at: http://runforyourlifefitness.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/persevering.html#sthash.y4wC8Ahc.dpuf

Knowing that it will happen marathon runners prepare for it ahead of time. It helps them be mentally prepared and focused.The quit zone will happen. We have all experienced it. We have all had something that has been hard and we've felt like giving up. we've all had those things that seemed great, that we knew were right, and then stuff happens; it gets hard and we get tired, or it seems like the result we expected is not happening.

What do we do when we get to that zone?
What can we draw on that will help us?

1. Understand the quit zone is normal

Finding things tough and hard is normal. That sense of "it’s all too hard" is normal. It’s normal but it doesn't have to overwhelm us or define us. It only becomes too hard if we give up. Tough times happen. When we are prepared for them, when know they will come, we can be ready for them and realise that they are only a point and a time, a season, they are not the be all and end all of our lives.

Jesus had tough times too. Even as he faced the cross he was saying "God this is hard,but I look to you, to do your will". Instead of being defined by "it’s too hard" we can be defined by "this is tough but it will get better". I believe we need to get rid of the phrase “it’s too hard”, and replace it with “all things are possible”

Philippians 4:12-13
I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

Giving up never makes anything better.

Gal 6:9-10
So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.

Heb 12:12-13
So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

Don't give up because we will reap a harvest of righteousness etc. (And others are watching and will follow.) This is talking about persevering in our spiritual lives. When we persevere, when we do good, when we don’t give up, there is a reward. Its normal to get to a point where it is hard and going on seems difficult. But remember: The victory is usually just around the corner. As in the Marathon, the toughest part is usually just before the breakthrough, just before the victory.

2. Build Strength

Knowing that these times will come what can we do to build resilience and strength?

Last week we talked about how an athlete prepares well. When we prepare well we build strength. A marathon runner does not wake up one morning and go “I think I will run a marathon today” without doing many months of deliberate training and preparation. When we are deliberate about reading the Word and seeking God, when we are deliberate about our relationship with him, when we choose to get his word into our hearts, we build strength.

Why do some people bounce back better from adversity than others? Or why do some fail under pressure and others don’t? It’s called resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from the things that happen to us. Sometimes stuff happens in life that reduces resilience but the good news is that we can build resilience by focussing on and building on our strengths. By being deliberate in our approach, by making decisions that choose to look at what we can do, rather than what you can’t, we build resilience.

What areas of strength do we have in our lives?
What can we do, what do we have that helps us?

We have the word of God and the promises of God, we have friends and people, we have our own individual strengths, and we can be ahead of the game by the way we prepare. The bible says that what we sow is what we reap.

Galatians 6:7-8
Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.  Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.

Before we get to the tough times we have to learn to sow well. As we build strength into our lives, we can draw on those strengths. Sow into the Word; get it into your life and build on God's promises for you, his promises in his word. Develop a habit of positive attitudes and thinking that draws on the truth of the Word and on who you really are in Jesus. Jesus always with us, Jesus never leaves or forsakes us, God is the same yesterday today and forever.

Heb 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

As we get this stuff into our hearts we can draw on it when it’s tough. Dr Leaf’s strategies of working on areas of thinking and getting rid of toxic thoughts and building healthy thoughts are helpful here. Know what you want to build into your life and thinking and be deliberate about the change; then make a habit of doing it. (www.drleaf.com)

Be deliberate in relationships so that when it’s tough there are others who can help us. When we have support and encouragement, when we build positive relationships with others, there will be people to help us in tough times. Others will believe in us even when we struggle, but we need to develop strong and positive relationships.

What areas of life will you begin to build strength in?
What areas of thinking will you work on?

3. Refocus and apply faith

What was the original vision you had, the original direction, the word from God that you were given? Ask yourself “Why am I doing this”; What is the goal I’m heading to? Go back to it. Get excited about it again. Refocus on the main thing.

The story of Crystal from the No Quit Zone is a great story and a great example of refocussing to achieve goals. Pregnant at the age of 15, Crystal decided that she would not become a statistic; therefore quitting goals she set out to accomplish was not an option. She refocussed, finished her education and now helps others do the same. Stuff happens, but instead of giving up, we can refocus and move forward.

Refocus on what it is/was that you were working towards, regardless of the actual circumstances. Last week we looked at Phil 3, the apostle Paul, and his determination to push forward to reach the prize. Jesus as we mentioned earlier endured because of the joy before him and the final outcome. As we refocus we can take hold of God's promises, apply faith, step out and keep going.

Hebrews 13:5-6
Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said,
“I will never fail you.
    I will never abandon you.”
6 So we can say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper,
    so I will have no fear.
    What can mere people do to me?”

It’s the final outcome that is the key thing here. The immediate situation is never the end. There is always something to look towards. Anything worthwhile takes time and effort. Do a bit of an inventory.

What have we started that we didn’t finish?
What was it that caused us to quit? (a good decision or too hard?)
Is this a pattern or a habit we have developed?

In Nehemiah 4 we see the people of Israel under attack from the enemy. They had set out to build the walls around Jerusalem to strengthen their city and to rebuild their city. It got really hard: there were threats against them and terrible taunts aimed at stopping their work. But what did Nehemiah do? He could have quit, but he knew that was not right. Instead he focussed on the vision, on the goal on what he knew was his God given destiny. He refocused and he helped those with him to refocus. And most importantly, he did not quit. He applied faith to the situation and he kept going. God had called him and God would enable him.

What vision or goal do we need to refocus on?
What habits have we developed that are hindering us?

My Challenge to us all is to refocus and redirect our energies back on to the vision and not the circumstances.

Conclusion

As we run the race set before us, as we understand that the "quit zone" happens and is normal, we can be prepared and develop strategies to push through and to move forward. We can build strength and resilience through looking at the positives and concentrating on those, attacking negative thinking and building healthy thoughts instead. And finally, we can refocus on the original goal and aim, draw on God's promises, apply faith and step into the fulness of what God has for us.

Be in it to Win it: Part 1

Living life to win the race.

I believe most of us want to live life well. We want to be able to live in a way that is significant.What we find though is that some people seem to run the race of life well and others seem to stumble through it. What does it take to live life well? What does it mean to be able to live a life of significance over the long term.

Our society is an "instant" society. We want everything now, but life is not an "everything now" proposition. There is a saying that good things come to those who wait.This is really about patience and teaching kids to be patient. But life doesn't come to those who wait. Life comes to those who choose to live a significant life.

I'm using the term significant because we often think in terms of success,and prominence, but significance is more important. Significance is more about the legacy we leave for others than it is about success. Significance is about how we live and not about what we have.

We are all called to a significant life, but a significant life does not just happen. A significant life comes from understanding who we are in God and what he has called us to, then living our life from that.

Eph 1:4
Long ago before the creation of the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.

This is our position in Christ.

Eph 1:18
I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the wonderful future he has promised to those he called. I want you to realise what a rich and glorious inheritance ha has given us.

In Hebrews 11 we read of the people of faith and then in Hebrews 12 the writer says, because of all this, because of who we are, because we have such an inheritance, run the race of life with perseverance.

Hebrews 12: 1-3
Therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip of every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish.

Run with perseverance the race set before us. Hebrews 12 in the KJV says "Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race set before us."

Notice we do this keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.
This verse has some great thoughts about living the life set before us and being in it to win it.

Lay aside - put off and out away, get rid of burdens weights and encumbrances. The NLT says strip them away.

KJV Get rid of sins that beset - the word beset or entangle means the things that skillfully surround us, that try to entrap us and prevent us from running freely.

The word here for sin is a word that includes both sins of deed and of thought.

Here are some thoughts around what Jesus said sins.

Matt 12:34b-36
For whatever is in your heart detetmines what you say. A good person produces good words from a good heart, and an evil person produces evil words from and evil heart. And I tell you this, that you must give an account on judgement day of every idle word you speak.

Hebrews says to strip away the things that stop us living the life we are called to and to especially deal with the things that come from our heart and cause us to sin.
Be deliberate!

Remember that the good news is that God will bring to completion that which he started.

Phil 1:6
And I am sure that God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ comes back again

God is at work, and we too are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling or as the NLT says:

Phil 2:12b-13
Put into action God's saving work in your lives, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.

God is at work in us to will and to act. What does it mean to run with perseverance?

When I think about perseverance, knowing all this I think about the marathin runner. The Marathon runner runs a great distance, and originally it was a great distance run on purpose to get news of the ooucome iof a battle through to commanders: A race with purpose

If we are to run with oerseverance,what do marathon runners do? They train alot and they train diligently with an end goal in mind, they eat the right things and they prepare well. On the whole, most of the innformation around marathon running was about dress right, prepare well, hydrate properly. Proper preparation, then good follow through and aquital of the race is what is important.

In 2013, what does perseverance look like in an instant gratification world. How can we over come the temptation for short term gratification instead of long term gain? What does our marathon look like? How well prepared are we for the race we are to run?

The writer to Hebrews probably had the ancient Greek games in mind when he wrote this. When those guys ran their races they stripped off everything so that there was no hindrance to the progress. This is what the writer means when he says get rid of the things that slow us down. Those things are an encumbrance that we don't need to be carrying and we actually are not supposed to be carrying.

In fact in Hebrews what this means is that we exert ourselves to the utmost, against struggles, annoyances, obstacles etc that stand in the way of faith, holiness and a desire to spread the word. Colossians speaks of patient endurance with joy; the ongoing, the long haul, not a "tried that and it didn't work" attitude.

Anything worthwhile takes time and energy and perseverance. Paul says in Phil 3 he will put behind him everytjing he once counted important and push forward - not that he already attained it, but he would forsake all else and push forward to receive a heavenly reward.

Some thought around putting off short term gratification for the long term gain.

1. Get rid of excess baggage

The excess baggage we carry stops us from running the race well and from running to win. It trips you up. If you are going overseas and you have excess baggage you pay for it, it costs you.  It's the same when we run God's race of life for us. We need to be running the race; we are in it, but if we are to win it, we need to lose the excess baggage that trips us up and costs us a lot of time and energy.

The writer to Hebrews says get rid of the excess baggage.

What is the excess baggage that we carry ?

People that pull us down - the people in our life who take our time and energy and are always negative.

Bad habits that we have developed - those things that hinder us - sleeping in, eating the wrong food. Following and holding on to things that stop us moving forward - music and movies that feed us with rubbish

Grudges and  unforgiveness that cripples us spiritually and emotionally.
Sin - he things that we do that we know are wrong and that we struggle with.

Matt 5:30
If your hand - even if it is your stronger hand - causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your  whole body to be thrown into hell.

Matt 18:8
So if you hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter heaven crippled or lame than to be thrown into the unquenchable fire with both hands and feet.

If something causes you to sin get rid of it.

The past that intrudes and trips us up and lies to us - Paul says he will put the past behind him.

Phil 3:12-14
I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working towards that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No my dear brothers I am not yet all I should be but I am focussing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the need of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus is calling us up to heaven.

Paul says he is working to make the changes necessary and to get rid of the things that trouble him. He is not focussing on the past, or letting it intrude, he is forgetting the past, and looking at what lies ahead.

What is your excess baggage?
What is God asking you to throw off?

Are you getting caught up in sin - the enemy has set it up to entagle you and to craftily beset you?

2. Wear the right Clothes for the race

This is not about our physical clothes and how we dress although can I suggest wearing clothes appropriate to the occassion.

Going to a ball - wear a ball gown; running, wear running clothes; walking - wear good hiking boots and clothes etc.

The right clothes I speak of here is the right attitude - wear the right attitudes and the right characteristics.

Col 3:8-10
But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage,  malicious behaviour, slander and dirty language. Don't lie to each other because you have stripped off your old evil nature and its wicked deeds. In its place you have clothed yourself with a brand new nature that is continually being renewed as you learn more and more about Christ, who created this new nature within you.

Col 3:12-14
Since God chose you to be holy people whom he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. You must make allowances for each others faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others also. And the most important peace of clothing you must wear is love. Love is what ninds us all together in harmony.

Don't put off getting the right clothes. Get rid of what is inappropriate; chuck out the clothes that are no longer working for us; chuck out the attitudes that are not right, they don't work for you long term.

Notice that the runner in a marathon, or in any race for that matter is not worried about what others are wearing. They make sure that what they have is right and they don't make a fuss about the person next to them. We are each running our own race and we are to get rid of the behaviour and the attitudes that slow us down and clothe ourselves with the right clothes for the race.

Get rid of the things that hinder. Our attitudes can hinder us or help us

What attitudes are we carrying around that we need to get rid of?
What pieces of "clothing" are we wearing that is hindering us?
What will you replace it with?

Phil 2:2-8
Our attitude is to be like that of Christ's. He did not demand and cling to rights instead he humbled himself and became obedient.

3. Focus on what is ahead

Run the race set before us. We are in the race and in it to win it. Our life is spread out before us and is set before us. The race is not behind us, it is not what has already happened. Its the race that is set before us, which means it doesn't matter where you are at today, what is important is that which is ahead of you.

Endurance, living for the long haul, requires us to have a focus. What is our focus? The writer to Hebrews talks about looking to Jesus who enables us to run and not grow weary. He says, keep your focus on Jesus, keep your focus on what he has called you to.

Paul says to the Philippians, that his focus is the reward in from of him, the heavenly reward. He is focussing on what lies ahead and not what is behind. When we focus on what is ahead of us, we stop being distracted by the past.

Ecclesiastes 5:19-20
And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life that is indeed from God. People who do this rarely look with sorrow on the past, for God has given them reason for joy.

Eph 1:3 says that God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. We are blessed, we are wealthy. God has placed us here in this time and place to run the race set before us, not to run each other's race but to run our race. When we understand that God has given us a purpose and we accept that and run the race before us, we have very little time to worry about what has already gone because the focus in on the future.

Focus on what you are supposed to be focussing on and the past won't be an issue. Focus on rewards and eternal outcomes. We often want to focus on short term gain, not long term reward and fulfilment.

What is it that we want to achieve?
What is it that is important to us and what is it that is the reason for being?

Whether we are in business, professionals, sports people etc, the long term is important and the goal that lies ahead is important. Those who are training for the Olympics train for many years, they keep the long term in mind which enables them to move forward in the short term. Focus on what lies ahead.

Where is your focus?
What is it that God  asking you to focus on?
What goals has he set before you to pursue?
What will you change to ensure you stay focused?

Conclusion
God has placed before us an amazing life of purpose. A race that he has set up and planned for us to win.We are to run that race to win.Throw off the things that hinder, clothe ourselves with love and run with perseverance focussing on the purpose of God and the end goal.