Why the love for this verse? Here's a couple thoughts...
1. It again has the imagery of my spiritual life being a race that I run. I connect with that being that I love sports and have played them all my life. There's just something about me realizing that my spiritual journey is like a giant marathon that I'm running. It's my connection with the runner moving forward that I like. I'm challenged to consider how I can move forward, even if only a little bit, every day in my relationship with God.
Are you moving forward in your walk with God? How? Do you have every day goals or weekly goals that you're trying to accomplish?
A marathon runner sets both big goals and small goals. A big goal is the obvious goal of completing the race in a specified amount of time. The small goals have to do with the pace they are running, their training routines, their mile-markers along the way, etc...
2. In the NIV version (New International Version) it says that there is a "great cloud of witnesses" that are cheering us on. I love this!! If you read it in other translations you'll discover what this means. It means that there are people sitting in the stands cheering you on in your spiritual race. I love that! Someone is cheering for me. Someone is looking down from heaven cheering me on, saying, "You can do it, you can make it, don't give up, don't ever up!!"
Imagine that you're in a huge stadium with hundreds of thousands of people there in the stands. You're running around the track for the final laps and the entire stadium is cheering you on. That's the image that God wants in your mind. It's like all of heaven is looking down and cheering us on. It's a whole lot easier to do the right thing and stay true to running the race when you have someone cheering you.
This part of the verse also means that others have already made it. If they made it, so can you. God is not asking you to do something that no one else has ever done.
3. The last part of verse takes me back to what Pastor Courtney preached on Wednesday night. "Throw off the sin that so easily entangles..." One of the biggest obstacles in our race is sin. The verse gives the imagery of our sin being like a snare or a rope wrapped around our feet. We get "entangled" in it. You can't run a race with your feet all wrapped up in rope. It kinda makes me think of the game called, "Three-legged race". You know this one... when you and a friend tie one leg together and try to run. It can be done, but it's exhausting and you don't move too fast. The same is true in our spiritual life. In order to really run the race well we need to avoid all the sin and all the junk as much as possible.
Here's some questions to ask yourself today:
1. How am I doing in running my race?
2. Do I realize that all of heaven is cheering me on?
3. Do I have friends that are cheering me on right now?
4. What junk do I have going on in my life that is hindering my race?
Have a great day!!! :)
PE
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