[FS] So That Your Faith Might Endure

And and that's a distinction I want us to understand. The the race he's talking about, to win the race, does not mean that you have to come in first. It means you finished the race. And I remember I did my first one. I was like, yes, I finished. That was that was all I wanna do. And that's exactly what the apostle Paul tells Timothy, young Timothy. [00:35:23] (24 seconds)  #FinishTheRace

And maybe because that is a sin that you struggle with and this happens to too many people, the sin that they struggle with, they they think, oh, I can never barely be. I I I keep having to go back and ask him for forgiveness. Jesus said, keep coming back and ask for forgiveness and ask for strength to overcome. You're not disqualified because you struggle with sin. You end up being disqualified when you stop struggling. [00:38:02] (25 seconds)  #KeepComingBackToGrace

How about just being prideful? Spending so much time thinking only of yourself. And the crazy thing about that is and you and pretty much everybody in this room I think has experienced this, is when we actually stop thinking about ourselves and we help other people, we feel lighter. We feel this sense of joy and we feel this this blessing when we actually help other people. So why don't we do it more? [00:51:38] (31 seconds)  #ServeOthersNotSelf

And if we don't, we get tired. We may not finish the race. Folks, each one of us has our own race. Each one of us has our own weighty thing or things. Each one of us has our own sin that we wanna be able to pull off even though it clings so tightly to us. And my prayer to you today is that you wrestle with this today. [00:53:39] (27 seconds)  #RunYourOwnRace

Jesus was on mission. He was on a mission of joy actually that included a cross and included shame. Seems almost contradictory, doesn't it? Much of Jesus is. You know, there were there there was so much humiliation and shame on the cross and historians are pretty pretty solid on this thought and we don't really talk about it. But when they crucified Jesus and when they crucified anybody, they stripped them completely naked. You know, you see a crucifix and you see a loincloth and I'm glad for that, but he was stripped naked and bared in front of all of humanity. Total shame. Total shame. [00:58:07] (50 seconds)  #JoyThroughTheCross

But here's the point. When we take our eyes off Jesus, you're going to have trouble staying in the race. Right? Just like you take your eyes off the road, you're going to have troubles not having an accident. When you take your eyes off Jesus, you're gonna have trouble running the race. When you all get to heaven, just ask Peter about this. Remember? He was walking on the water, looking at Jesus and they looked at the storm and what happened? He sank. He sank. He went down but Jesus helped him up. Right? He's there for us. [01:01:52] (41 seconds)  #EyesOnJesus

We need to consider what kind of suffering he he endured for us. And when I think about that, when I consider what Jesus did, that he did this for me personally before he knew me or before I was. I think he's always known everybody. He did it for us. God did it for us. We need to consider that and I can't imagine there's anything, anything that compares to that. I cannot think of any type of suffering that has ever taken place. Anybody that has done anything for me that even resembles or is close to that kind of suffering and that kind of love. [01:04:23] (52 seconds)  #ConsiderHisSacrifice

But just like Jesus went to the cross with joy in his heart, ready to face the the torture and the shame, we too as Christians, when we pull off the sin and we get rid of the way the weighty things and we focus our eyes on Jesus, we can and will experience and see the joy that God gives us. [01:07:24] (23 seconds)  #JoyWhenWeFixOurEyes