The Run Of Your Lifetime

                                          1 Corinthians 9:24
                "Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but
                    one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain."

        Many of the Corinthian converts had, no doubt, seen, or even taken part in a race. The previous portion of the verse opens the minds of the Corinthians, to their familiar knowledge of the arena and the competitors, "Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?" He would have them picture the eager racers, with every muscle strained, and the one victor starting to the front; of the pack, and then he says, "Look toward the front, the first place position. That is how you should run.  So run meaning not, "Run so that you "may" obtain the prize," but "Run so" as the victor does, in "order" that you may obtain. So, then, this victor is to be a lesson to us, and we are to take a leaf out of his book. Let us see what he teaches us.
        Paul gives us one valuable thought out of this, and it is this. If people would work half as hard to gain the highest object that a man can set before him, as hundreds of people are ready to do in order to gain trivial and useless objects, there would be fewer stunted and half dead Christians among us. "That is the way to run," says Paul, "if you want to obtain."
        So, the larger portion of most lives goes to getting the wheels to move forward, and there is very little left, in the case of many of us, in order to help us towards God, and bring us closer into communion with our Lord. ‘Run’ for the crown as eagerly as you ‘run’ for your incomes, or for anything that you really, in your deepest desires, want. Take yourselves for your own patterns and your own rebukes. Your own lives may show you how you can love, hope, work, and deny yourselves when you have sufficient incentive.
         If you would run for the incorruptible prize of effort in the fashion in which others and yourselves run for the corruptible, your whole lives would be changed. Why! if Christian people in general really took half of half? Yes!  A tenth part of the honest, persistent pains to improve their Christian character, and become more like Jesus Christ, there would be a new life for most of our Christian communities. Hours upon hours are never too much to give to our Lord; how many moments do we give to the other? "So run, that ye obtain."
        Amen!!

Reading: (1Cor. 9:1-24)

                                     May God Bless You
                                      And Your Families

                                                   Minister Robert A. Lail
                                                   The Cross Life Ministry