Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint” describes many of life’s challenges and opportunities. This saying conveys the understanding that whatever it is that we are getting ready to undertake will take a lot of time and energy to finish. Whether it’s something that we are pursuing as a life goal, like working toward a college degree or starting a new career, or it is something that has happened to us without our choosing it, like recovering from an injury or illness, the marathons in our lives require us to have stamina and drive. When we know what is coming our way, we can prepare for the challenges of the marathons in our lives. Even then, we often find that our endurance and resolve isn’t enough to run these marathons. We also need the encouragement of other people in order to keep going when we feel like giving up. Without both endurance and encouragement, we would lose hope.
Like running marathons and living out the marathons of our lives, we also need endurance and encouragement to meet the challenges of living our lives faithfully before God. Our life in Christ is also a marathon that calls for serious preparation. Beginning in Baptism and continuing to the day we enter into Christ’s presence through physical death, our journey in the Faith is all encompassing. It is the most challenging marathon that we can experience. We would quickly lose heart and give up running the course of faithfulness to Christ if it were not for the endurance and encouragement that He provides.
John the Baptist shows us what it takes to be prepared for our spiritual marathon with Jesus. John’s ministry was a ministry of preparing people through the preaching of repentance and then either baptizing those who were penitent for forgiveness or rebuking and warning those who were impenitent. He calls us to prepare the way for the Kingdom to come into our lives through repentance. Unfortunately, we often think of repentance as a sprint rather than as a marathon. When we do, we’re likely to lose hope when our lives are not immediately conformed to Christ and we continue to struggle with sin and the effects of sin in our lives. When we understand that a life of repentance is a marathon we are far more prepared to meet the challenges of living out our Baptisms in a fallen world. With the endurance and the encouragement of God’s Word, we live each day in repentance knowing that when we stumble God will hold us up (or pick us up) and see us to the completion of the race that He has set before us. With His endurance and His encouragement we will abound in hope.
Click here to listen to the sermon "Endurance, Encouragement, and Hope" (or right-click to download the MP3 file).
No comments:
Post a Comment