Race to the kingdom

Hello everyone. I hope you are having a fantastic week and that you are enjoying this boiling hot weather we are enduring. I was on my way to the basement when God hit me with something very interesting. Christianity is like a race. Not in the sense that we have to win the race. It's not a competition. I want you to look at different aspects of a race, not the finish line.

The team. The Olympics are always so interesting to watch. You have a group of people with different strengths and they excel in different areas. Someone is great at hurdles, someone is great in short distance. Someone has the endurance for long runs. Jumpers for the high jump. One person doesn't excel in EVERY area. As in the body of Christ, we have different people who are called for different area's. Some people have gifts that blanket different area's but that doesn't mean that that area is their calling. We have people who have to be the hands, feet, and mouth. 1 Corinthians talks about this. It's in 12:21 it talks about comparing ourselves to another person. Each person is designed for a specific task.

The race in general. Many times we hear the scripture in Philippians 3:14 about I press on towards the goal..... etc etc. In a race, we are pressing to get to the finish line BEFORE anyone else. In Christianity, we are racing to save souls from Hell. We are pressing on towards the goal of winning people to the Lord. I love that we don't have to compete with people to get numbers to get to heaven. It's about adding to the race, not winning it.

The fall. The Bible talks about idols. How we are not supposed to put someone, whether that be our Pastor, our best friend, our spouse, above God. I know that we tend to do that a lot of times. When we do that, we are setting ourselves up to fall. An idol is something that takes God's place in our life. If that thing, or person, that is an idol in our life fails or messes up, we become paralyzed. When you watch races, does everyone stops if someone falls? No. They keep going. BUT if someone is behind them, they could fall. This is a great example for us to remember. If we put someone, or something, in front of us in this race we could fall when they do.

Continuing on. I could be way in left field here. But if we look at Philippians 3:13 we see that Paul says, "Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead." This portion of scripture comes right before the scripture that says I press on towards my goal. Paul even knew that it wasn't about the mistakes that have happened. The falls, or mistakes, or backsliding, or failures of others. It's about CONTINUING! Pressing onward. We're humans, we're gonna mess up. BUT we have to keep going. The call of God doesn't stop just because someone, or something, doesn't look the way you thought it was supposed to.

No matter what you have done in this race, you have to keep going. If someone you love dearly has made a mistake, it's not the end of the world. We HAVE to keep going!! The great commission is still the great commission! At the end of all this, God's will will be done!