May 27, 2018 Our Christian Posture Part 2 by Pastor Larry Trummel, Gateway Church Livermnore

Christian Posture Begins with Being Seated in Christ

Brother, good morning brothers and sisters and friends, it's a blessing again for me and my wife to be with you here on this Lord's Day. I want to say first of all, using the words of the Apostle Paul, that I thank God that when you received the Word of God, as I proclaimed at last Lord's Day, you received it not as the words of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God.

And I thank you that you are hungry for that Word and receptive to it. And I, as our brother has prayed, trust the Lord that He will again feed us, provide for us, teach us, direct us, and where we need to be, correct us in the things of our life of faith.

As the brother said last week, I began with you a two-part series, this being the second and final part, of our Christian posture. And I'm using the word posture, we use it to describe our bodily position or activities and so forth.

We're thinking of this spiritually. What does the Bible have to say to the believer in terms of our position, spiritual position and activity in relationship to the Lord? And last week, the first and perhaps the most important one is the posture of sitting.

And as our brother said, we are seated in Christ, and it all begins with that. That is never used as an imperative, we're never told in the Bible, sit in Christ, but when we believe upon Him, we find lo and behold, we are sitting or seated with Christ in the heavenly places.

Now if we were to take the four points of the compass, whenever you have a map, the old hard copy kind of thing, always, maybe rare exceptions, the top of the map is what direction? It's north. We find our orientation by first of all knowing what is north.

If I were to relate the four postures we're going to consider, I would say the first one north is our being seated in Christ. Once we know of our seating, then all the other postures or, quote, spiritual directions to say with the analogy, will then find their appropriate place.

Walking Worthy of the Calling in Ephesians

And so today, we're going to consider the other three, the other three postures that we didn't cover last week, and those will be that of walking, standing, and running. Now I used a phrase, which I repeat, to say that the sign of grace or the indication that a person has grace is more grace.

If we have saving grace, that will come out in our lives in other areas that we would call graces. If you have the grace of being seated in Christ, it will come out as you're walking in Christ, as you're standing in Christ, and as you're running the life of faith as well.

How do you know if you're seated in Christ? Because you're walking, you're standing, and you're running. Unlike in the physical world, we can't do all those at the same time, but with God, all things are possible, and so in Christ, we find ourselves all of these postures at one and the same time.

So as those who are seated in Christ, we take up the next one, the posture of walking. Please turn to the book of Ephesians, Ephesians, and I'm going to read several verses, four or five verses from the book of Ephesians, beginning with chapter 2.

Chapter 2 and verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Chapter 4 and verse 1, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called.

Chapter 5 and verse 2, and walk in love just as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us in offering a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. And then chapter 5 and verse 8, for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light. And then finally, in chapter 5 verse 15, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Walking, we're told repeatedly, walking is good exercise.

In the life of faith, walking is not only a good idea, it is an imperative, it is a must for our spiritual life to walk. Now, realize that when you're walking in the spiritual life, the posture of walking, you're doing it from a seated position.

Physically that makes no sense, but spiritually it makes all the sense in the world. We are seated and therefore we walk in that seated position. When you look at the book of Ephesians, which we're using for at least 3 of the 4 postures, you find that in the book of Ephesians, it begins with where we began with the posture of being seated in Christ, chapters 1 and 2.

Chapter 3 in Ephesians is a little bit of an interlude, and Paul kind of takes a little bit of a tangent there. And then in chapter 4 and chapter 5 primarily, he comes back to what grace. He no longer talks about our being seated in Christ, but now he talks about our walking, our walking with the Lord, our walking in faith.

And as you read through this epistle, the first imperative, the first command, the first do this that I find in the book of Ephesians, well there's one in chapter 2 and verse 10 where Paul says, now remember, and that's in the imperative form.

But after that, the very first imperative he comes to is the imperative of walk. So we immediately move from being seated in Christ to walking in Christ. Immediately coming out of that seated posture, we begin as it were to move.

Now I know it's a hackneyed, well-worn, threadbare saying, but I haven't come up with a better one. And it's simply this, walk the walk. Since you have the best seat in the house, walk the walk. And this is exactly what the Word of God is telling us.

Walk as you ought to walk in Christ. Now when you take all the witness, which of course we can't do in one sermon, but when you take all the witness of especially the New Testament Scripture to this posture of walking, you begin to realize that that kind of figurative language is a favorite of the New Testament.

It's a favorite to describe, to tell us about our life of faith as to what it is. Why is walking a favorite New Testament way of expressing the Christian life? Let me share with you a couple of reasons why I think it is.

In Ephesians chapter 2, the first few verses there says,. And you He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also you all once conducted, or we conducted ourselves, in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

One of the reasons I think that the Bible, the New Testament specifically, uses walking in that figurative language to describe the Christian life is because the Christian life is all-inclusive. It includes everything.

Notice in the verses that I read that our term appears there in verse 2, in which you also once walked. But notice when you get to verse 3, Paul changes the vocabulary and he says, Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves, or the ESV I think says, Among whom we also once lived.

Now, to walk is to live. To walk is to live the Christian life. But Paul uses two different terms here to describe the Christian life. The first one being our walk, and then he uses that very simple plain word, to live, or to conduct ourselves.

There is a subtle difference between the two. And the point that I'm making with you is that walking is used often as a favorite New Testament way to describe the Christian life because the Christian life is all-inclusive.

And that's a little bit different than when Paul uses the term, as we conducted ourselves. A little bit of a subtle difference there, but it is a difference. The first word is peripateo. That means to walk.

A peripatetic is a person who walks around and teaches. Peripateo. The second word is onostrepho. Onostrepho means the word to behave. It's what a mother says to her child when he is going over to a friend's house for a birthday party and she won't be there to monitor.

And she says to the child, now behave yourself, be on your best conduct, don't lick the knife, say please and thank you, and don't sneeze into the air. Behave yourself. Conduct yourself. She is telling him this is a specific way that I want you to do things in a specific environment.

She's not teaching him all about life, though subtly she is, she's teaching him for that hour and a half you're gone, this is what I want you to do. That's onostrepho. That's conduct yourself. That is a very specific time, place, and conduct and attitude that is to be appropriate to that.

That's fitting to that situation. But walking is a larger term. No matter where you are, if you go to the birthday party or the supermarket or you're sitting in class in school or you're driving in the car on vacation, it doesn't matter, this is what I want you to do and how you are to live.

The Christian life is all inclusive and so the term here walk seeks to embrace all of that at one and the same time. Not only is it a favorite way of expressing the Christian life to say that we walk and we're to walk the walk because all of it is included, but secondly it's a favorite because the Christian life is a life of activity, of work, and of exertion.

Look at chapter 2 here in Ephesians, beginning with the famous verse in verse 8, for by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God. Not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared before him that we should walk in them.

Walking is exerting ourself, it's active, there's some work sometimes involved with it. Being seated in Christ is totally passive. Walking is very active and so it chooses the term, the Holy Spirit does, to walk to show that the Christian life is certainly an active, involved life of work and exertion, albeit from that seated posture of course.

As we are seated in him, so we walk it out and we work out our salvation with fear and trembling because he is at work within us. And so we walk the walk because this life of faith is a life of exercise and of activity.

But the third and final reason that I want to give you this morning that I think that this is a favorite, the New Testament way of describing and expressing our life of faith in Jesus Christ is a walk and so we're to walk that walk.

It's because the Christian life is a life of progress and a life of focus and a life of purpose. In other words, there's movement in it, not just exercise for the sake of exercise. We could do aerobic exercise and never move an inch.

But in the Christian life we're walking which implies that we're going from one place to another place. The church building in Livermore is about a 12 minute walk from my house. So if I go from the street that I live on to the street of the church building, I'm going from one point to another, takes me about 15 minutes or less in order to do that.

But I make progress and I'm moving in that. Paul tells us that we are to walk and in that walking we are going from where we are to where we will be and that movement is a spiritual movement of life and faith and we, by the grace of God, show that we have the grace of being seated in Christ because then we walk that walk of faith as we live it out.

Notice now in chapter 4, secondly this morning, not only is it a favorite way of describing the Christian life but notice now in chapter 4 in verses 1 and following there, Paul gives us secondly this morning how we are to walk that faith.

He says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you've been called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

How do we walk the Christian walk? What does it look like? Here is a spiritual, if you will, picture of it. And you know how a person walks, their movement can tell you something about that person. For example, when the police officer says, excuse me sir, would you mind stepping out of the car?

And he says to that person, now, see that line right there? Walk down that line, put one foot right in front of another. The way the man walks is going to tell that police officer something about that man.

Whether or not he may be under the influence. It tells us something. A person who's had some very hard times, some deep challenges of soul, of thought, of reflection, he may walk along with sort of a shuffle, and his head is hanging down.

He's depressed. And you can see it in the way that he moves. Whereas a person who is very upbeat, maybe a little bit on the arrogant side, holds his head up, pulls his pants up, and he strides like a peacock.

The way he walks tells you something about him, potentially. And so the way we walk tells something about us, where we are in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what does Paul say? Here's what it looks like.

I'm beseeching you to walk that walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. First of all, with all lowliness. You may have the word humility, synonym. With all humility and lowliness. I suppose in the Apostle Paul's day, that characteristic or that quality was not highly thought of.

I suspect in Paul's day, that kind of a characteristic or quality of being lowly and humble was for what I would call the bottom feeders. You know, the people on the bottom rung of life. The low people, the servants, the peons.

Yeah, they should be humble, they should be lowly. They're down there, but we're up here. Paul says God's people, they walk in humility. They walk in this way because that shows that they are walking that walk of faith that they've been given in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Humbling. Now you don't have to go very far in your Bible knowledge to remember that humility is one of those great attributes and qualities of Jesus Christ, who humbled himself to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Paul is saying when you walk the walk of faith, you're walking where Jesus walked, and you're walking in a way that is to be in conformity or consistency with the character of Jesus Christ himself, because that's God's purpose is to make us like the Lord, make us like his son.

And so when you walk, you walk with all lowliness and humility. Notice secondly, how are we to walk this walk of faith? He says with all humility and secondly, and gentleness. With gentleness. Or you may have the word with meekness.

Sometimes this feels a little bit like a slippery fish and trying to get a hold of it. It seems to squirt right out of our hands when we get a hold of it, at least it does for me. But I've found it helps me to think, this gentleness, this meekness, think of the term domesticated.

Domesticated. A 12 or 1500 pound Mustang out of the deserts of Nevada is a formidable animal. I wouldn't want to jump on his back. But after he has been with the trainer and gone through various exercises, you could put your little kid on the back of that.

The horse has been domesticated. I don't know if any of you are in touch with the equestrian world or not, but I guess they don't call them so much now necessarily trainers or those who break horses as they used to say, but they call them those who gentle horses.

You ever heard that term? They talk about gentling a horse. Not handling him roughly or meanly, but very, very gently. I think that's great. And this is what Paul is talking about. With all gentleness.

There is extreme power there and yet it's domesticated. It's under control. And that's what we are to be in our walk of faith. It's not describing personality. Whoever we are, keep it in check. Keep our passions, our emotions, everything in check and be gentle and meek.

Do you know that this is true? This also is an attribute of Christ? Paul says, I plead with you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. He says, be like your Lord. Walk as he once walked. And our Lord would not take a smoking flax or a bruised reed and stomp on it or squish it out.

He will treat it with such tenderness and gentleness. This is how we walk, how we are to walk, the walk of faith. So he says, with all lowliness and gentleness, thirdly, with long-suffering, or of course the word is patience.

With long-suffering and patience. You're in a bit of a hurry today and you come up to the door and just about the same time you get to the door, someone else is approaching who goes through first. Do you habitually say, I was here first, I'm going to go through first?

Or may you step back for a moment and say, after you. Or even open the door so that they can go through. Patience, with all long-suffering and patience. Willing to wait, slow to speak, slow to anger, the scripture tells us.

We are to have some, what I would call elasticity, in our affections, in our feelings, and not just as it were, immediately and always reacting to, going with the flow of thought and feeling in our life.

If I can make a crude comparison, I would say that our lives and our affections and so forth, they should sort of be like a bungee cord in the sense that there's a lot of elasticity to it. You can stretch them quite a bit, and when you stretch them out and they're under tension, I want to tell you, don't let that bungee cord go.

Anybody ever let a tensioned bungee cord go? I've had one slip out of my hand and man it hit me right in the face and boy did it hurt. But as long as it was under control, it's what it should have been.

Go ahead and stretch it out, but don't let it snap back. People snap, and that's when we get in trouble, and that's when we're unlike Christ. Long suffering, patient, willing to be stretched out. Let us walk with that patience.

And then finally here, notice in verse 2, bearing with one another in love. Bearing simply means putting up with, that's the plain way to say it. Just put up with it. Something's not agreeable, something rubs you the wrong way, something is a little bit irritating to you, put up with it, bear with it.

You don't have to jump on it with both feet. And just like all of these, even regarding the patience of Christ, also this one as the fourth attribute, like all the other three, is used to describe Jesus Christ himself.

He says, how long shall I bear with you, generation? It's the spirit of Christ that Paul is talking about. And so our Christian posture, the posture of walking, comes out from that seated position that we have in him, because we're united with him.

We are, if you will, of one spirit with him. And that spirit now dwells in us, and as the dwelling spirit has its influence and effect in our lives, we walk the walk, and we walk it out in this way. And finally, Paul says, and walk in love, chapter five and verse two.

And walk in love, he says, as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. It's all about Christ, and out of that union and relationship we have with him comes this grace and this Christian posture of our walking.

Now there's a ton more. I've barely scratched the surface on this. But it is the very first thing that we come to when we find ourselves seated in Christ is then we begin to walk the walk. Which brings me to the next one then, which is the third posture.

Standing Your Ground Against the Wiles of the Devil

Sitting the first, walking the second, and now the third. And the third is standing. Turn over to Ephesians chapter six, and as was read to us this morning, beginning in verse 10, this is what we find.

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, and put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand, stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, and so forth, as the armor of God is given to us.

Standing, our third Christian posture. You begin with being seated, you have the best seat in the house. You move on to walking, walk the walk. And now thirdly, you stand. I understand that in some states, and honestly I don't know about California, but in some states there is a law which basically says under certain conditions and under certain circumstances, you do not have to back down or give way in a threatening situation.

A situation that may be threatening property, or even life. But you are legally able to, if you will, protect and defend yourself with force, if necessary. That law has become known as the stand your ground law.

Stand your ground. This is what Paul, by the Holy Spirit, is telling the people of God. Your third Christian posture is to stand your ground. After being seated in Christ, we then take off walking. And we find that as we are walking through life, it's not simply a stroll through the park.

That walk can have many challenges related to it. There can be impediments. There can be ditches before us. There can be hurdles over which we need to step over, or jump over, or overcome, or hazards, or whatever it may be.

And we find that there are difficulties in the walk of our faith. What do we do? We stand our ground. As those who, in that initial faith, are joined to Christ, we remain joined to Christ in our walk, and even when that walk becomes very challenged, or very difficult, or very awkward for us to do.

I refer you again to the book of Ephesians. Chapters one and two, the first posture is what? Being seated. Chapters four and five is what posture? It is the posture of walking. And chapter six is the posture of standing.

Standing. Now the general meaning, first of all, of this posture of standing, I think it's pretty self-evident, and of all the terms, all the postures that we've used here, I find personally this one very interesting, in how this basic word, stand, is used multiple times in the New Testament.

It's like this. You can take the basic, simple word, stand, and then you can modify it with another little word to give it a certain emphasis. Remember on the little chart there, if you happened to see it last week, we took the same terms for Christ and the Christian, and then Paul put a little preposition on the front of it, and that little preposition really gave a real punch, and identified us again with Christ.

It's a similar kind of thing. You take the word stand, and you put another little word with it, and it gives it a little punch in one way or another. And the New Testament does this, it has about 20, literally, 20 different ways that it can take the word stand and modify it.

Still has the basic idea of stand, but it changes a little bit. We do this in English, for example, stand up, stand down. Stand in, stand out. Stand by, stand aside. Stand with, stand off. Stand for, stand against.

All different shades of meaning, but they all come down to that basic root idea, taking a position and staying where you are. It's not that hard, is it? To stand your ground. Now the physical posture of standing, like the other things, can potentially communicate certain things.

I don't know if anybody happens to be a Warriors fan, Giants fan, 49ers fan, I don't know your history here or anything, but if you are at a sporting event that's highly competitive, and it's, quote, on the line, a lot of people come to their feet, don't they?

The noise is intense, and the posture is standing. It tells you there's lots of enthusiasm, there's lots of excitement going on there, it tells you something about them. Or, if you happen to be in a more somber environment, like a courtroom, and you hear the words, all stand, people come to their feet out of honor and respect for the judge, and then be seated.

Standing but they're very different meanings. One is one of enthusiasm, excitement, the other is respect. When the Bible says to us, stand, therefore, he's not telling us, the Spirit of God is not telling us, be excited, like a sports fanatic, he's not just telling us now, be very respectful, though we have the utmost respect for the things of God.

He's telling us something quite different. He's telling us, of course, that we are to, in our position that we occupy in Christ, we are, as it were, to hold on and to retain, if you will, that position that we've been given in Christ, which is a fixed and determined position given by God.

We stand our ground. Now it may help a little bit, of course, and it's very obvious, that the opposite of standing is what? Falling. We know that the righteous man falls seven times. The reason he can fall seven times is because after each one of those, he gets back up and he stands.

The opposite of falling is standing. So that we will not fall, therefore, we are to stand. There's a lot of truth in the saying that he who stands for nothing will fall for anything. We stand for Christ.

We stand for the things of God, and we will not fall for anything, whether it comes to us from the world, the flesh, or the devil. We take our stand and we seek to hold that. The opposite of stand can also mean to back down, to retreat, to give in to a situation and to move away from it.

When Paul says here in our passage in Ephesians 6, he says to us in verse 11, as you put on that whole armor of God, you do so that you might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. So that you will not, as it were, go into those, enter into those, but be able to resist in the evil day.

And the Scripture gives us all kinds of things for which we are to stand. Second Thessalonians 2 tells us to stand for the traditions which have been handed down to us, that is the apostolic authoritative word.

We stand for it, it's been given to us in the ascripturated form. We are to stand in hard times, stand in difficult times. Here in Ephesians 6, we are to stand against the wiles of the devil. All the different ways and schemes and methods that he may employ to come against us, we do not give way at all, but we seek to resist him that he might flee from us.

Resist him, the Scripture says, steadfast in your faith. That's standing your holy ground. Now brothers and sisters, may I simply refresh in your mind this morning, before I leave this point, how it is that you and I may maintain this good spiritual posture of standing and of standing our ground as we ought to stand as expression of the life of our faith.

And one thing that I would remind you of, in order to stand true, to stand faithful, to stand fast, is to remember and to recall the Word of God. You know, this is a great emphasis that Paul has in the passage that he has here before us in this, when he says, in taking up the Word of God, and so on and so forth there along with all the other, and all this is one thing really, not separate, but taking all of this.

But recalling and having the Word of God embedded in your soul, running through your mind, maybe even upon your lips, is a good and edifying and profitable and spiritually strengthening thing to do. The psalmist said, I have set the Lord before me, because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

I know where He is, and I know where I am, therefore I shall not be moved. Because those who trust in the Lord, they are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. And it's the righteous, the righteous we are told, that they run to the name of the Lord, that name of the Lord which is a strong tower, and we run to that tower, and then we are safe.

There we stand and take our position. I remind you of the importance of the Word of God. I remind you, as Paul does here, to equip yourself with all of the graces and all of the gifts and all of the blessings which God has given, and he enumerates several of those in this armor of God.

Your waist with truth, the breastplate of righteousness, your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, and so on and so forth as he gives it there, in order that you might be able to stand.

And then one final thing that the Scripture gives us, not in Ephesians, but that Paul mentions in references, and it shows the integration of God's people with one another to be able to stand. Paul says in Colossians 4 and verse 12, he says, Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.

If we took the principle of that verse, I think we would find that the principle of it is teaching us that we cannot stand alone, but we stand in part because of the prayers of God's people on our behalf.

As we pray for others, others pray for us, and so all are knit together that we might be able to stand our ground and be faithful until that final day. Our Christian posture of standing. And so the ones that I've covered, being seated, walking, standing, brings me then to the fourth and final one very briefly this morning.

Running the Race with Endurance

And here I have to go out of the book of Ephesians. And I do so by going to the book of 1 Corinthians. Of 1 Corinthians, chapter 9, to look briefly at the fourth and final posture of running. 1 Corinthians 9, 24, the Word of God says, 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, and thus I fight, and so forth, as he says.

Fourth and final posture, that of running. There's a well-known racetrack called Churchill Downs. The winning horse of the Kentucky Derby, the horse, is given a reward for winning. You know what it is?

It's a wreath, a wreath of flowers, specifically of roses. And so the Kentucky Derby race has also become known as the Run for the Roses. Brothers and sisters, we are to not only, as it were, walk the walk and stand our ground, but we are to run for the roses.

This is what Paul is saying in our passage. Run in such a way, he says. In such a way. Now the two postures of walking and then that of running, what's the difference between the posture of walking and the posture of running?

Well you say, duh, it's very simple. Walking is a little bit slower and running is a little bit faster. The difference is between speed, right? Physically you would be right, spiritually you would be wrong.

Don't want to insult you. The difference in the Bible for describing the postures of the Christian life, the difference between running and walking is not the degree or the amount of speed. In other words, it's not how fast, but the difference between the two postures is how far.

Now obviously the walk of faith will get us all the way to heaven, I understand that. But the emphasis that Scripture makes on running is not how fast are you running, but how far are you running. He says there is a race and we are to run the race.

How far? Until you cross the finish line. That's how far. I'm sure you've seen the races, marathons or whatever they are. Some people finish in two hours and 45 minutes and here, oh it's been hours later, in fact the sun has gone down, it's still dark and here's one just coming along, finally crossing the finish line six hours and 29 minutes later.

But they finished. Not how fast, but how far. The goal is the issue for the posture of running. It's a race, there's a course and there's a prize and the idea is to break the tape, to run for the roses, to finish that race.

And that's what the Scripture is telling us to do. Paul when he would get to the end of his life, he would talk in those terms, I fought the good fight, I finished the course. He's saying, I ran all the way.

As he sees himself right on the threshold to cross over and to be with Christ. The issue for the Christian is not necessarily what's there beside you right now, but what's in front of you. And what is it that's in front of you?

Glory, a heavenly reward, blessing, a wreath. And Paul says the one that we are running for is not a perishable crown, but it's an imperishable crown. It's not something that's temporary, it's something that's permanent.

And therefore we are to run that race and to run for that. Something else that the posture here of running emphasizes is not only the goal and not just the gate, the goal that we have in mind, but the fact of course that running emphasizes or at least implies exertion and effort expended in order to do that.

Paul uses that kind of imagery in the book of Philippians chapter 3 and verse 13. You probably heard it many, many times. He says, brethren, I don't 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. And you've probably heard explained, here's a picture of a runner, perhaps an athletic person who has in his body every muscle, every nerve, every tendon is engaged and giving it all he's got and he's stretched out there, if you will, to break the tape, to finish the course.

He's exerting himself and Paul says, that's my life as I'm running the race is to exert myself. Brothers and sisters, sometimes we need to have someone come along, either it's the Word of God or the Spirit of God or a faithful friend or our own conscience or whatever it may be that says to us, hey, buddy, push yourself.

Hey, man, hey, woman, get up, break the tape, pay the price, run for the roses. Anyone here never need to hear those kinds of things. We are running in a race. And sometimes in that race we get a little fatigued.