September 3, 2004
Now that the 2004 Summer Olympics are over, I am left reflecting on my own athletic endeavors in the past. Let’s see. There was the time that I was running Track, tripped on my own feet and slammed my knee into the cinders and the cinders into my knee. The pain didn’t bother me so much but the spectacle I had made of myself very nearly caused me to die of embarrassment.
It didn’t help, of course, that the coach didn’t give tuppence about my injury even with the sight of blood gushing down my leg and mingling with the black cinders on the track. Incidentally, I’ve noticed that coaches don’t cater much to self-pity. Oh, well. At least I’ve got cinders still in my knee as a souvenir.
I remember too as an older teenager playing some two-on-two basketball and slam-dunking the ball through the hoop (with a little help from short stone wall nearby). I guess I should not have hung on the basket’s rim so long. Who would have guessed that the backboard might not have been designed for such abuse? As you might suppose, the game ended with my accidental destruction of the basket and backboard.
Then there was the time that I had just moved. It was my eleventh grade year at a new high school and I had just gotten up to bat in front of my new team. Maybe subconsciously hoping to impress my new coaches and teammates with how tough I was, I was immediately beaned with a fastball. “What a way to start the season,” I thought as I crashed backward from the impact of the ball. No pain, no gain, right?Given my lack of athletic finesse, “Going for the Gold” was naturally never really a catch phrase for me until I began to understand that I indeed am an athlete… spiritually at least, if not also physically.
As Christians are we not “running a race”, a marathon run in which only perseverance brought forth from faith in Him can keep us going? Are we not “wrestling” today with powerful social and ideological opponents that watch us with shifting eyes, seeking to lay hold of us and topple us over with confusion and “pinned to the mat” with doubt? Are we not hoping to daily “score a goal” by holding forth Truth, so that someone will see His light of love and reach for the prize of eternal life?
Don’t assume that because “Rocky’s Theme” isn’t blaring every moment of every day that we may squander life as spiritual couch potatoes. Are you waiting for someone else to run into the ring? Hey, you! Put your gloves on and get in there!
And don’t get caught running on the wrong track! Can you see Him in your mind’s eye, this One Who shed His blood for you to receive the gift of eternal life? Coach and Team Manager, He’s also the Great Reward of those who will receive Him as Lord.
“…I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12b-14 NKJV).
The race is on. The goal is before us. The starting gun has fired. Let’s get out there and win!
“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” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27 NKJV).
Perhaps you can even hear in your heart’s ear the crowd in Heaven as they roar their approval of those who start the race and then stick with it until finally reaching their goal – the goal of remaining true to Him until the end.
“…Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrew 12:1-2 NKJV).
(Thom Mollohan has ministered in southern Ohio the past nine years and is the pastor of Pathway Community Church. He and his wife are the parents of three children with another on the way! He may be reached by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).
