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A Christian
Thought for the Month - July 2014
Thoughts for believers & seekers
Thought for the Month -
Running a Race?
Heb 12:1 ... let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us.
2 Tim 4:7 ... I have finished the race, I have kept the faith
Because I’m running late this month, by the time you read this the Tour de France will have been through Essex. It is a race that stirs the imagination, with dozens of cyclists pounding the last 96 miles English stretch from Cambridge to London. The reports said millions turned out to cheer it under way for the first time from Yorkshire and crowds have been out in Essex. What was it that made so many turn out to watch just about four minutes of cycling spectacle? If you were out on the route the odds are that within four minutes they would all have gone by and that was it.
We’re told we live in a post-modern word and one thing that post-modern people (especially young people) crave is an experience. Whether it is watching tennis from Henman Hill or turning up in Rayleigh High Street to watch the Olympic baton pass by, or stand and watch a mass of cyclists pass by, it is so that we can say, “I was there,” (with phone pictures to prove it!) It was the experience, the buzz, the excitement, as brief as it was. In a year’s time it will be a hazy memory, but it is a memory I have; it wasn’t just something I saw on TV.
Is that, I wonder, why so many people today have been put off expressing any real faith? The majority of people confess to believing, in theory at least, in a God but to go beyond that basic acknowledgement is too much for most people. Is that, I wonder again, why so many people are put off by the ‘experience’ that is offered of ‘church’?
Yes, some of us acknowledge we need that sense of the ‘something other’ that may be felt in orthodox worship, but many more of us crave something far more than that. Turning up to sing some songs as directed by someone from the front, told to listen to someone praying from the front, and then having to listen to some sort of sermon that so often seems to have little relevance to today’s world, by someone out the front, and then left to wander out and off home, all this makes many people feel they want more of an experience than this. But is that the experience the Bible suggests ‘church’ should be?
Both the well-known apostle Paul and the writer to the Hebrews (in our quotes above) speak of life as a race. It’s not an uncommon picture is it? I mean we hear of people referring to life as “the rat race”. This use of the word ‘race’ (not the sort that speaks of ‘race-riots’) is about movement and action, purpose and direction.
The term ‘rate race’ (according to Wikipedia) means “an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape while running around a maze or in a wheel.” Another Internet definition is “a way of life in which people are caught up in a fiercely competitive struggle for wealth or power.” Observe the words, ‘pointless pursuit’, ‘futile efforts’, ‘running around’. Those are action words, but they all have to do with a life that has got no goal except self-serving, career enhancing endeavour, and striving to survive, which desperately hopes that it will all have some meaning.
How many people hit mid-life and experience that ‘midlife crisis’ wondering what they have achieved and where the years left are going to take them. The race that the great apostle Paul spoke of was a life of movement and action that had become God-centred. The argument goes like this: God knows every single person in detail and knows how we would uniquely ‘work best’. Because He is a God of love, He longs to help and guide us into that life where we ‘work best’. Of course the starting point is an acknowledgement that at the moment we are not ‘working’ (as a human being) the best way we could. We often don’t cope very well with life and relationships, and indeed find ourselves on the treadmill of the rat race. We find ourselves muttering, “There must be a better way than this.”
And of course, there is, because God knows better than we do how to run the race without running ourselves into the ground. That same apostle Paul, in our quote above said, “I have finished the race.” He was anticipating being very close to death and felt he was at the end of his life, but the way he spoke of it was positive. He had confidence that he had got on and done what God had shown him was the best for his particular life.
So many people fill their lives with activity, often doing good, maybe even working for the community, and all that is good, except the good often keeps us from the best. Is it possible to answer this question in the affirmative: “Can you say that you are at complete peace with the way your life is going, knowing that you have been lead into the best for you as a unique individual?” Well, all of us have question marks over bits of our lives (why is this happening, is there a way I can do this better..... etc.) but in general, yes it is possible to say ‘yes’ to that question.
It usually starts with a prayer something like, “God, I realise I haven’t got it all right. In fact having ignored you I realise I’ve probably got so much of it wrong. I need your forgiveness and I need you in my life, leading and guiding it, because I’ve been told you’ve got something better for me than I have at the moment.” I prayed something like that over forty years ago and found I had a new purpose in life: to find out what He had in store for me, the way He wanted me to live and what gifts He wanted to develop in me. Forty years on I look back and marvel at the incredible number of times I sensed guidance and direction, the incredible number of times I felt His hand guiding my affairs, and always for good. It was, and is, possible because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s unique Son who made this possible (and there’s a whole load more that could be said there.)
But am I in a rat race? No! What sort of race am I in? One with movement and action, purpose and direction, that is going somewhere – with Him – with a sense of fulfilment and achievement. How much further to run? Time will tell. This has not been a four minute experience; this has proved to be a lifetime experience and perhaps I’ll say some more about it next month.
And you?
Heb 12:1 ... let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us.
2 Tim 4:7 ... I have finished the race, I have kept the faith
Because I’m running late this month, by the time you read this the Tour de France will have been through Essex. It is a race that stirs the imagination, with dozens of cyclists pounding the last 96 miles English stretch from Cambridge to London. The reports said millions turned out to cheer it under way for the first time from Yorkshire and crowds have been out in Essex. What was it that made so many turn out to watch just about four minutes of cycling spectacle? If you were out on the route the odds are that within four minutes they would all have gone by and that was it.
We’re told we live in a post-
Is that, I wonder, why so many people today have been put off expressing any real faith? The majority of people confess to believing, in theory at least, in a God but to go beyond that basic acknowledgement is too much for most people. Is that, I wonder again, why so many people are put off by the ‘experience’ that is offered of ‘church’?
Yes, some of us acknowledge we need that sense of the ‘something other’ that may be felt in orthodox worship, but many more of us crave something far more than that. Turning up to sing some songs as directed by someone from the front, told to listen to someone praying from the front, and then having to listen to some sort of sermon that so often seems to have little relevance to today’s world, by someone out the front, and then left to wander out and off home, all this makes many people feel they want more of an experience than this. But is that the experience the Bible suggests ‘church’ should be?
Both the well-
The term ‘rate race’ (according to Wikipedia) means “an endless, self-
How many people hit mid-
And of course, there is, because God knows better than we do how to run the race without running ourselves into the ground. That same apostle Paul, in our quote above said, “I have finished the race.” He was anticipating being very close to death and felt he was at the end of his life, but the way he spoke of it was positive. He had confidence that he had got on and done what God had shown him was the best for his particular life.
So many people fill their lives with activity, often doing good, maybe even working for the community, and all that is good, except the good often keeps us from the best. Is it possible to answer this question in the affirmative: “Can you say that you are at complete peace with the way your life is going, knowing that you have been lead into the best for you as a unique individual?” Well, all of us have question marks over bits of our lives (why is this happening, is there a way I can do this better..... etc.) but in general, yes it is possible to say ‘yes’ to that question.
It usually starts with a prayer something like, “God, I realise I haven’t got it all right. In fact having ignored you I realise I’ve probably got so much of it wrong. I need your forgiveness and I need you in my life, leading and guiding it, because I’ve been told you’ve got something better for me than I have at the moment.” I prayed something like that over forty years ago and found I had a new purpose in life: to find out what He had in store for me, the way He wanted me to live and what gifts He wanted to develop in me. Forty years on I look back and marvel at the incredible number of times I sensed guidance and direction, the incredible number of times I felt His hand guiding my affairs, and always for good. It was, and is, possible because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s unique Son who made this possible (and there’s a whole load more that could be said there.)
But am I in a rat race? No! What sort of race am I in? One with movement and action, purpose and direction, that is going somewhere – with Him – with a sense of fulfilment and achievement. How much further to run? Time will tell. This has not been a four minute experience; this has proved to be a lifetime experience and perhaps I’ll say some more about it next month.
And you?