Living For Christ With Intention

The title of the message tonight, “Living For Christ With Intention.” There are a lot of things that we do halfheartedly. I want to take you back a little bit, maybe when you were a child or a teenager and your mom asked you to clean the bathroom. How enthusiastic were you about accomplishing that task? I’m gonna guess, if you’re anything like me, not so much. You did what you had to do because you were asked by your mom, but you probably were just trying to get away with the bare minimum, doing only what was required but not necessarily doing a good job. Maybe when you were a teen your dad at some point asked you to wash his car. Again, you did it because Dad asked, but you weren’t doing it because you were excited about it. Again, you were probably halfhearted in your effort, not really paying much attention to detail.

There are a lot of things in life that we do that way. Maybe yard work for us is going to be very halfhearted—we’re just not into it; we just don’t care that much. Maybe your garage is disorganized for the most part because it has not really been a priority for you, and you’re halfhearted about putting things away where they’re supposed to go. We can go through life doing many things halfhearted. The thing about doing something halfhearted is that it’s going to show. People are going to know. If you’re doing your job halfhearted, your boss is going to know. If your teacher sees that you are halfhearted about the work that you’re putting in in the classroom, it’s going to show, they are going to take notice of it. Sometimes we just want to get by. It’s not something that is all that important to us.

Let me tell you that when it comes to your walk with the Lord, we’re not to take that halfhearted. Sometimes we can approach our relationship with the Lord with halfheartedness. Maybe at some point in our life we put our whole heart into it—we desired to honor God, serve God, be faithful to Him with all that is within us—but it’s not uncommon for us to fall into a place where we’re only given half effort these days. We’re not giving it our all anymore, so we’re going through the motions but our heart has become detached from it and we’re no longer in a place where we are active and deliberate and living out the Christian life with purpose and with intention, and that’s why I am titling this message tonight “Living For Christ With Intention” because we’re going to be looking at a passage of Scripture that addresses just that.

We all know that Jesus has called us to follow Him, and you cannot follow by staying stationary. You cannot follow Jesus by sitting down or remaining inactive. If we’re going to take up our cross, we have to be putting in effort to do so. Here in this passage the Apostle Paul is talking to the Corinthians and says to them in verse 24 (for many of us this will be a familiar passage), he 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. 25 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. 26 Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. 27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”

Before we begin to break this passage down, I want to explain that this passage is not teaching us about our salvation. It’s not in some way explaining to us how we can be saved, it is about the way in which we should live out our Christian faith. That’s an important distinction because we can get confused by Paul’s words here and begin to assume that it is our effort that is going to get us saved. But he’s not talking about salvation and we know that if he was, that would totally contradict what he has said in other places in that our effort has nothing to do with our salvation. It’s not about our works—it’s not about what we do or what it is that we don’t do—that is going to earn us a place in God’s Kingdom. We cannot do that. It doesn’t matter how much effort we put into it.

Our salvation was a deliberate act of God where He intervened in the world by sending His one and only Son to come to this earth, live a perfect life, and then give His life as a sacrifice upon the cross for the sins of the world. The only thing we can do to be saved is to place our trust in what He did for us. It has nothing to do with what we do for God. If there is anybody here tonight that maybe you’ve never given your life to Christ but you’re in a place now where you are trying your best to earn God’s favor by living a better life than you’ve lived in the past or doing some good deeds that might win God’s approval, let me tell you, you’ll never do enough because the Bible tells us that we all fall short of the glory of God. It is all what Christ has done for us.

First and foremost I want us to understand that when we look at these verses, we are not looking at Paul trying to explain to us how we can earn our own place in God’s favor or a place in heaven. We cannot do that. We have to fall at the feet of Jesus and receive His grace and mercy. Amen?

That being said, if you have received Christ into your life and you have been given eternal life and you have a relationship with God today, you are now to be active in pursuing after Christ. Your life now will be a lifelong—as many years as God gives you here on this earth—journey of trying to be faithful to Him, to walk in obedience to His Word, to serve God’s people, and to be a faithful child of God.

Paul is writing here to Corinthian believers. The church of Corinth was in the country of Greece, and we have identified by Paul’s words in this letter, 1 Corinthians, that they were a pretty carnal church. By that, I mean that though they had a relationship with the Lord, they were living their lives, many of them, with one foot in Christ and the other in the world. They would show up to the church services but during the week they were living their lives much like the other Corinthians that were not following the Lord at all, and Paul has already up to this point in the book of 1 Corinthians addressed many of the issues that were going on with them.

Many of them had pride issues, so Paul had to address their pride. There was a lot of bickering going on between some of these believers, so Paul had to address a lot of that bickering. There were sexual sins being committed by some of these followers of Christ, so Paul had to address those things, too. All in all, there were many of them that though they had a relationship with Christ, they really weren’t growing in their relationship with the Lord. They weren’t moving forward. They considered themselves followers of Christ, but they weren’t following in a lot of areas of their lives.

Paul, here in this passage, is challenging them to get serious about their spiritual training. In verse 24 it 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.” Here Paul is going to be comparing the Christian life to running a race. I want you to know that this is not the only place in the Bible where that comparison is drawn, where this metaphor is used to describe our walk with the Lord. It is described as a race where we are on a track straining, sweating, gutting it out, making sacrifices, and working hard to run this race.

Now, that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun to many of us. We would, many maybe, want to think of the Christian life more as like being on a luxury cruise liner where if you want to run there’s a gym onboard—you can go to the gym, you can get on a treadmill. On some of those big ships they have a track that runs around the top of the boat, and if you want to run, you can run, but you don’t have to—you can sit on a lounge chair by the pool, you can soak in the hot tub if you want to. You can go to the endless buffet lines and eat until you’re tired and then sleep until you get hungry again and start it all over again. There are many things that you can do on the “Jesus cruise line,” and many would prefer to be at the buffet than to be on the track running a race, but as long as they are on the “Jesus boat,” they know that boat is heading to heaven and would just as soon be on a lounge chair on that ship than to be running the race.

But, see, that is not God’s intent, and that’s not the way that He wants us to embrace our Christian faith. We are to be considering that it is a race that is not always easy. Did not Jesus say, “Enter by the narrow gate; for…broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.” But, “…narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.”

There were two athletic events that took place back in those days in the land of Greece. One we are very familiar with, and that was the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games, I don’t know if you know this, date back prior to Christ by about seven hundred years. It was about 700 BC that the Olympic Games began in Olympia in the land of Greece. It was competitive events where athletes would enter and race against each other or box against each other. I’m not really sure how many events they had in those days, it definitely has grown into a worldwide phenomenon in our day and age, but the Olympics were going on at the time that Paul was writing the book of 1 Corinthians.

The Olympics were not the only games that were played. There was another set of athletic events that took place in Corinth. They essentially would alternate years where the Olympics would be taking place at one point and these other games that would take place in Corinth would take place maybe the following year, and they also dated back hundreds of years before the time of Christ. In fact, it is very possible, since Paul spent time in Corinth, that he got to witness some of these athletic events that took place that these Corinthians would have known very well since they took place right where they lived. In fact, tracing back the history of these games, some have stated that in the spring of AD 51 these games were taking place in Corinth.

It just so happens by our historical records we know that Paul was in Corinth for about a year and a half, from AD 50-AD 52 which meant that Paul would have been there at the time that these games were going on, so it’s not a surprise to us that he would draw on what they knew and begin to compare it to the Christian life. These games that would take place in Corinth, he is now going to use to compare to you and me as followers of Christ.

There are three things that are going to help us run well that are going to be talked about here in this passage, but I’m also going to refer to another passage in the book of Hebrews that is very similar to what Paul says here to the Corinthians. These three things are going to help us run our race well. I want you to write these down, if you do like to take notes. The first is our motivation for running well. The second is the hindrances to our running well. The third will be what it takes to run well. So, motivation for running well, hindrances to running well, and what it takes to run well. We’ll begin by looking at the motivation. What should motivate us to run our race well? Let’s look again at verse 25 where Paul says this, “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.”

What is he talking about? He’s comparing what the reward was for the victors in those athletic events that took place in Greece back at that time. They didn’t get gold, silver, or bronze medals. They probably didn’t get endorsements either. What they got was basically a wreath that was placed upon their head indicating that they had won their particular event. These wreaths would be woven together with maybe some twigs from a tree or a vine, but it would be woven to give the appearance of a crown being set upon their head. But as Paul described them, he says that they are a perishable crown. I mean, how long is that going to last? The leaves will be green for a few days, and then they’re going to begin to dry out, turn brown, and by the end of the week you might as well throw it in the green waste bin because it’s basically all dried up and unattractive now. It’s perishable. They’re putting all of this effort, all of this training, to win an event so that they can get some award that is going to perish.

Paul compares that to the reward that we receive as believers. They do it for a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. What is that imperishable crown? I don’t have a lot of details about that. I don’t know all of what the rewards are for us as believers. There are Scriptures that give us some indication but not a lot of detail. What I do know is that we as Christians will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The book of 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that. One day all of us as Christians will stand before, not the great white throne judgement which is the judgments of nonbelievers, we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

What is the judgment seat of Christ? I didn’t think we were going to be judged at all, you might be thinking to yourself. Well, we’re not judged for our sins. Our sins are forgiven because of what Christ did for us. Hallelujah! But we will be judged, 2 Corinthians 5 tells us, according to our works, whether they were good or whether they were bad, and we will be rewarded for the things that we did that were in obedience to the Lord, the way that we served God’s people, the way that we honored God with our lives. We will be rewarded for those things. Whatever those rewards happen to be, whether they’re literal crowns or figurative crowns, I don’t really know. What I do know is this, we will never lose them. Whatever those rewards are, will not perish.

Remember what Jesus said? “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Whatever we gain here on planet earth is going to fade, it’s going to wear out. It may be stolen, it might rust, but in the end we’re not going to get to keep it anyway, so why do we labor so much for things that are going to be so temporary. Jesus compels us, “You know, you ought to labor for the things that last forever.”

Paul draws attention to our motivation. Our motivation ought to be this: If people on earth will labor so hard to keep things that are so temporary, how much more should we as followers of Christ labor for the things that glorify God and we could keep forever. When it comes to these rewards, I really have a hard time with not only understanding exactly what they are, but I sometimes have a hard time even being motivated by them alone. Well, it sounds nice having streets of gold and maybe a crown to place on my head, but in reality what I’m looking forward to most, and maybe you are, too, is the fact that our heavenly Father will one day say to us, “Well, done, good and faithful servant…Enter into the joy of your lord.” Now, that’s appealing to me, and that motivates me to want to live a life that is running my race well. We ought to be motivated to run with endurance this race that is set before us not just because we will be rewarded with maybe silver and gold or whatever God has in mind, but we will be rewarded with the words of affirmation from our heavenly Father and be able to be in His presence forever. Let that motivate you.

Though we are motivated and can be motivated, there are hindrances to us running well. In the race that Paul describes, he’s describing a race where there is only one winner in verse 24, and that’s the way those events would work. If you’re in a foot race against ten other guys, there’s only one guy that’s going to cross the finish line first, and he’s the guy that’s going to win, everybody else has lost the race. Is that really descriptive of what the Christian race is? Not really. I mean, we’re not all running against each other. In the Olympics, they run against each other, but are we running against each other? No, we are not. Otherwise, there is only one person that is going to receive the reward. There’s only one person who’s going to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and that’s just not what Scripture tells us.

If we’re not running against each other, what are we running against? We’re running against the obstacles that get in the way of us running our race well. In Hebrews 12 we’re also told that we ought to run our race well, but one of the things that the writer of Hebrews tells us in that chapter is that there are things that get in the way of us running our race well. He names them. He says, “…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.” He identifies these things that are going to get in the way. He calls them weights and sins.

What are those weights and sins? We know what sin is. Sin is the very things that God forbids us to do in Scripture. What would “weights” be? I would imagine that they are those things that are holding us back, the distractions of life that are keeping us from running our race well. We get distracted. We get distracted by the things that this world has to offer us. It may be that at some point our attention was focused on the Lord, that was our first love, and our desire was to honor God with our life, but then other things began to creep in. Maybe we entered into a relationship, and that relationship began to take priority over the Lord in our life. Maybe we got ambitious and we set certain goals for ourself, and the pursuit of those goals began to diminish our devotion to the Lord. Maybe it’s a particular purchase. Maybe it is a hobby that we begin to go after, but there are a thousand things that this world will place in our path that can become a distraction to us from running our race well.

Remember when Jesus told the parable of the sower telling about a farmer who went out to sow seeds in his field? Those seeds were falling on different types of soil, but one of the types of soil was among the thorns where those seeds fell into the earth and they began to grow, but the thorns around it began to choke out the seed so that it was unfruitful. Jesus went on to explain what those “thorns” meant. He said it was the cares of this life where the seed of the Word of God could be planted in our hearts, and though we begin to grow, we begin to get choked out because we get more concerned with the cares of this life than we do with the implanted seed of the Word of God, so that seed became unfruitful.

In the book of Hebrews, what I just quoted to you, it actually says that those weights and sins can ensnare us, can trip us up; so distractions in this world can be those things which are choking our walk with the Lord, which are tripping up our relationship with the Lord, and we need to be undistractible. I’m not even really sure that’s a word, but we’re going to make it a word tonight. If we’re going to run our race well, we need to be undistractible.

Back in 1957 the World Series was being played between the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Braves. The Yankees had a Hall of Fame catcher by the name of Yogi Berra at that time. He was notorious behind the plate during the game of talking smack to the batters in an attempt to distract the batter from doing what he had come to the plate to do, that was to hit the ball. All throughout the game Yogi would be back there talking with whoever was up to the plate trying to distract his attention away from being focused on hitting that baseball.

On one at bat, Hank Aaron, another Hall of Famer, came up to the plate so Yogi began his banter. He began to harass Hank as he was standing in the batter’s box waiting for the next pitch. “Hey, Hank! You’re holding the bat wrong. You need to be holding the bat so that you can read the trademark. Turn the bat around! You’re not going to be able to hit the ball well, unless you can read the trademark on the bat!” Hank Aaron didn’t pay any attention. He just kept his eyes upon the pitcher waiting for the ball to arrive, and the next pitch he hit over the left field wall. He began his home-run trot going around the bases, but when he got back to home plate, there was Yogi with his hands on his hips. Hank looked him in the eye and said, “I didn’t come up here to read,” undistracted, undistractible.

We need to have that kind of tenacity in our walk with the Lord because I will tell you the world is full of billboards. The world is full of commercials. The world is full of things that will vie for your attention, and we need to prioritize the things that really matter from the things that really don’t matter. We need to make sure that the things that matter are the things that we pay most attention to and the things that don’t matter we pay the least attention to. There are hindrances to your walk with the Lord. There may be some things going on in your life even right now that you know have become a problem for you in your faithfulness to following after Jesus with diligence and intention.

Here’s the other thing about distractions, that is, it can cause our fire to go out. Remember when you first gave your life to the Lord? There was just a fire in your bones, an excitement, a joy over the fact that you knew now that you had a relationship with God, that you were forgiven of your sins, that you had eternal life, and it was just a zeal in your heart. Over time, that zeal can begin to diminish. The fire that once burned bright can just begin to fade down to where it’s just a spark, it’s just an ember. It may still be there, but it’s not what it was at one time. One thing about fires is that it needs fuel. A fire to keep burning needs new fuel because if it runs out of fuel, it will burn itself out.

When we’re distracted by all of the things this world has to offer, all of the temporary things, so that all of our time, our energy, our attention is going on those things and no longer being focused on our following after Christ, running our race with endurance, we now are putting the fuel on temporary things and not putting the fuel on eternal things. If we want our fire to burn brightly, we need to stoke the fire of our relationship with the Lord. We need to make sure that we are putting the fuel where it’s going to ignite us again and cause us to grow.

That being the distractions, the hindrances to our walk with the Lord, we now need to talk about what it takes to run well. The good thing about this passage is it gives us three very clear things that we can do if we want to run the race well. The first one is that we need to be “temperate in all things.” Verse 25, “And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things.” That word “temperate” simply means self-control. Athletes have a lot of self-control. Olympic athletes have an immense amount of self-control because if you are going to compete on that level, on that elite level, to be one of the best in the world at whatever your sport happens to be, you need to be very controlled. You need to be very temperate about what you do and what you do not do.

You guys realize that Olympians don’t live like the rest of us. Every two years, every four years, whatever it is, when we’re sitting on our couches watching them do their thing, we fantasize about, “Wow! Look how awesome they are and what they are able to do! Look what they are accomplishing on the world stage! Man, I wish I could do that.” Have you ever looked at what they do for the four years before they get on that world stage? You see, they’re getting out of bed when it’s still dark to swim laps in a cold swimming pool while we’re pushing the snooze button ten times. They’re pushing themselves away from the dinner table still a little bit hungry when we’re loading up our second plate, maybe our third. They have to discipline themselves, they have to exercise self-control, they have to be temperate in all things in order to attain that level on the world stage.

Paul is appealing to us in regards to our walk with the Lord. If they will do such drastic things for a temporary crown, how much more ought we to be doing in our pursuit of Christ. To run well, we need to be “temperate in all things.” There’s things that we need to do; there’s things that we need to stop doing. We can’t live like everybody else. When your non-believing friends are going off doing whatever, there are times that we have to say, “I can’t. I can’t be a part of that.” Sometimes when our believing friends are going off to do this, that, or the other, some of us need to make the decision, “I can’t go with you.” That’s being “temperate in all things.”

Second, we need to be focused. In verse 26, Paul says this, “Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air.” What does it mean to run with uncertainty? It means you’re running, you’re moving, but you’re not really going any place in particular. Yeah, there’s a lot of action going on, but there’s no real goal. There’s no real destination. There’s no real focus on what it is that you are running for. Let me tell you, if you don’t make a determination on where you are going, there will be somebody who will determine it for you.

There’s a passage in Ephesians 2 where Paul is talking about those believers before they had given their life to Christ. He describes them as, “…once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.” That’s biblical terminology basically telling them that the course that they were on was set by Satan and was according to worldliness, and it was because they had not made the determination of how they were going to live, that was determined for them by none other than the world system around them and Satan behind the scenes. If we are not determined in where we are running and what our goal is, chances are somebody else is going to be determining that for us.

Paul says, “I run…not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air,”—swinging at the air. There is no benefit to be in a boxing match when you’re throwing punches and all you’re touching is the air. You’ve got to land your blows. That’s what the boxer’s job is to do is he’s got to land the blows on his competitor. If he’s just swinging at the air, he’s just wasting energy and accomplishing nothing. He has to be focused. He has to be focused so that he’s landing his blows. We can’t run with uncertainty. We can’t beat the air, which is essentially a descriptive way of saying living your life haphazardly—you’re just kind of going through life taking every day as it comes—maybe not intentionally pursuing anything wrong, but not being intentional on doing what is right. If that is the case, we’re living our lives haphazardly.

That word “haphazardly” actually means to depend on mere chance. Unfortunately, a lot of times we as Christians are just living our day-to-day lives relying on chance that things will fall into place, that our walk with the Lord will take care of itself. Instead of relying upon a haphazard relationship with God, we need to be focused, we need to be temperate, and we need to be disciplined. That’s the third.

In verse 27, Paul says, “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection.” Some Bibles actually in place of the word “discipline” use the word buffet, “I buffet my body”—not buffet my body. It does not say, “I buffet my body.” We would love it if it said, “We are to buffet our bodies,” but it does not say that. It says, “…buffet my body,” or in my Bible it says “discipline.” Some other Bibles will use other descriptive words like pummel, “I pummel my body.”

What is it actually saying? The Greek term actually means literally to hit under the eye. Notice what Paul is saying who he is hitting under the eye, “But I discipline my body.” In verse 26 he says, “I’m not going to be the guy who’s throwing blows hitting the air, I’m going to be the guy throwing blows hitting myself. Now, why in the world would he say something like that? You see, Paul realized something that I think all of us ought to realize, that is, the strongest enemy against us running our race with endurance, running our race well, is not the devil and it’s not the world, it is ourselves. It is ourselves, and Paul realized that if he was going to run his race faithfully, he had to discipline his own body.

Now, throwing blows at his own face is a descriptive way of saying that he was not going to allow his sin nature—his flesh—to dictate what he was going to do. Instead, he, in the Spirit, was going to dictate to his body what his body was going to do. A lot of times we are listening to our bodies to determine what we are going to do, that’s why we hit the snooze button, we don’t want to get out of bed. Instead of allowing our body to dictate how we live our lives, we need to dictate to our body how we are going to follow Christ. That’s what Paul was describing here is that he was not going to allow himself to get in the way of running his race well.

In fact, the passage goes on and says, “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection.” That term “bring it into subjection” literally meant I make it my slave. I am making my body a slave to my demands. I will tell my body what it can and what it cannot do, and it is going to fall in line with what God’s Word is telling me.

Now, why would Paul be so hard on himself? Why would he be so drastic? Look how verse 27 finishes, “…lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” Does that mean he was afraid that he might lose his salvation? Is he saying that, “I’m making sure that I keep my body in line because I don’t want to be disqualified from going to heaven?” No. Remember, this passage is not talking to us about how we earn our salvation, so it is surely not talking to us about how we can lose our salvation. It is talking about how the believer lives his life to the glory of God.

“…become disqualified.” What Paul was concerned about was that he would come to the end of his life and had not been faithful to God’s calling upon his life, had not fulfilled his purpose, he had not pleased his Savior, and would not receive those heavenly rewards had he been obedient and faithful and diligent. His eyes were set on the prize of knowing that he was pleasing God and that God would be glorified and that God’s people would be blessed, and that he would have lived the life that God called him to, that’s why in the book of Philippians he said, “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” He was pressing towards that goal. He was pushing to the end. He wanted to be able to finish well, and you know what? He did.

The last book that Paul wrote was the book of 2 Timothy. When he wrote that book he knew that his death was getting close, that he was not long going to be living here on the earth anymore. In 2 Timothy 4 he wrote these words, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” Isn’t that great he included you and me. He had reached the end and said, “You know what? It was hard, but I fought that good fight. It was long, but I have now finished my race, and I’m still walking by faith, and I know now that I have run my race well. This isn’t only for me, this is also for all the others who know that Jesus is one day going to come back for them.” That’s you and me.

As we wrap things up here tonight, I want to ask you this: Right now, are you living your Christian life with intention? Are you doing the things that you do to grow in your relationship with the Lord? Are you doing those things with purpose and with passion? Are you intentional about living out His Word? Are you intentional about being led by the Holy Spirit? Are you intentional about resisting sin? Are you intentional about repenting of sin? Are you intentional about loving, about forgiving, about serving? If you’re not intentional about these things, chances are they won’t happen much. Let’s run our race on purpose.

We’re not doing it perfect, I know that, but not even the Apostle Paul was doing it perfect, which is why he also had written these words, “Not that I have already attained…but I press on,” so let’s keep pressing on. Amen?