Hebrews 9:27
And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,

2 Corinthians 5:10
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

Every believer will stand before Jesus Christ at the end of their life and give an account of how they lived their life here on earth. The result of that judgment will be rewards from the Lord or loss of rewards. Most Christians rarely think about that event and imagine what it will be like to be greatly rewarded or to receive zero rewards.

There is a special award given to those who run the race of life with endurance and finish well.

James 1:12 Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.

Revelation 2:10 Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

2 Timothy 4:6-8 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

I don’t know what difference being awarded the “crown of life“ and the “crown of righteousness” will make in my experience for eternity with Jesus, but I am thinking that it will be very significant, a true reward, one that is worth aiming for and running the race of life with endurance for.

I ran twelve marathons between my 50th and 60th birthday. I also ran 25 half marathons during those same year’s. In all of those races I never quit one, but in everyone of them I wanted to quit in the worst way. I was pretty sure that if I kept on running I would die! I can proudly say that I finished every race that I ever started. In Hebrews 12:1 it says “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

That race is the race of life, and the finish line is when we stand before Jesus at the end of our life and give an accounting of our life to Him. Each of us has our own unique race given to us from God, and His admonition to each of us is to finish well, finish strong, finish at a sprint. When the apostle Paul was near martyrdom he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:6-8 “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”

In our culture today many who begin their journey with Christ strong plateau and then fall away. My observation is that more quit than finish. Even though the number of people walking away from their faith is growing it has always been a problem demonstrated by all the warnings given in the Bible about running with endurance.

I have identified a dozen reasons why people don’t finish the race with endurance, but I will give just one of those reasons in this blog, they run the race by themselves.

Hebrews 3:12-13 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

“Encourage one another day after day.” Those who run the race of life together with other believers giving and receiving encouragement finish well, those who think they don’t need others never finish well, but crash and burn somewhere before they cross the finish line.

People in our church who are reading the Bible almost every day of the year and are getting through the entire Bible in a year often ask me about the book of Leviticus when they are reading in it. I respond and say four things; first, all the detailed descriptions of bulls, goats, sheep, and turtle doves getting offered up as bloody burnt offerings shows the extent that God will go to, to take care of our sin. Second, reading Leviticus makes me so thankful that I was born on this side of the cross so now all I had to do to be forgiven was to believe the gospel and commit to following Jesus as Lord. Third, there were many of the Israelites who even with such detailed instructions on how to have their sins taken care of failed to follow the instructions and were excluded from God’s family, so even though salvation is much simpler today than in the book of Leviticus, many miss the whole message of the gospel and settle for a mental assent to a historical fact as the gospel, and someday they will find themselves excluded from God’s eternal family and it will be too late to do anything about it. Fourth, God loves ceremonies, or spiritual ordinances, that explain or picture spiritual truth, the book of Leviticus is full of them. In the New Testament, there are only two of them, baptism and communion, physical ceremonies that explain or picture spiritual truth. Recognizing as we read the book of Leviticus how important ordinances are to God we ought to take Baptism very seriously. Because we are eternally saved by grace through faith in the gospel apart from any works of righteousness many see baptism as an option that they can ignore. Read Romans 6:3-7 through slowly three or four times and then write down two or three observations. Better yet, read through the end of chapter six and write down four or five observations. Always be a seeker of God’s truth and don’t allow past paradigms to blind us to new truth in God’s plan.

Romans 6:3-7
Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog we all are the sum total of our choices in life. Jesus said, “there are many who enter the broad way, the easy way, the comfortable way, the convient way, the way of no pressure,” the end of that way is destruction, failure, mediocrity, and no fruit for Jesus.

The sad thing about today’s culture is that many people who make poor choices in life and then experience the guaranteed results and consequences from those choices then blame others for their plight in life.

Wisdom is a big deal in the book of Proverbs, and it is clear that the pathway to greater wisdom is to learn from our poor choices, but the person who blames others for their life situations never learns and continues to make poor choices and continues to blame others for their rotten life.

A basic spiritual discipline is to examine our own life and confess all known sin to God. To confess a sin means to own it, I did it, I blame no one, it was me all the way. When we confess our bad choices in life God forgives us, the power of that sin to control our life is weakened, we experience the joy of a clear conscience, and we grow in wisdom.

In my years of pastoring I have seen all kinds of people with all kinds of different backgrounds, experiences, potential, education levels, giftedness, intelligence, looks, and family. Of those many different kinds of people there is only one characteristic that separates them all into one of two groups, which are either successful or a failure. You might think there would be multiple factors that would determine the outcome of a person’s life, but I have seen just one.

That one determining characteristic of successful people is the willingness, the determination to make right choices most of the time. The right choice in most situations is not a mystery, it isn’t hard to know what it is, but the alternate choice is usually easier, more enjoyable, requiring less work, less sacrifice. Jesus tells a parable and calls the choices, the broad way and the narrow way.

Successful people decide to study hard. They decide to work hard. They decide to be the first person to get to work. They decide they are going to take on the hard jobs. Take on the challenges. They decide they are going to lead when no one else will. They choose who they are going to hang around and they choose who they will emulate. They choose to read the Bible everyday. They choose to follow Jesus.

Jesus said, “choose to enter through the narrow gate, the hard way, but most don’t, most enter through the broad and easy way, and they accomplish little and don’t amount to much.

Proverbs 1:5
A wise man will hear and increase in learning,
And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,

I want to get wiser every day of my life. I want to increase in learning. I want to be a man of understanding. I want to understand the times. I want to understand people, their needs, and my part in their life. I want to know and understand the Bible. I want to understand myself, my motives, my blind spots, my character flaws, my strengths, my gifts, and my relationship with God.

I want to do the right thing always. I want to say the right words at the right time. I want to give wise counsel to those who ask. I want to teach in a way that is easy to understand and that motivates those who hear me to change and to grow. And I want to get better and better at my teaching skill, always better.

I want my writing in my blog to communicate the truth of God’s Word, and to make it simple and clear so it is easy to understand and apply to everyday life. I would like the truth to be so compelling that people become addicted to reading it and the principles that I write about would pop into people’s thinking throughout their day.

For all that to happen I need to read a lot, readers are learners. I need to listen to a lot of good teachers and speakers to learn what they teach, but also to learn from them how to teach and preach well. I need to write a lot and read about the skill of writing. Always learning and constantly growing, and continually improving.

Part of the reason many of us aren’t motivated much is because we are bored. On my “high output alternator,” on my mustang, it has what is called an “exciter” wire which triggers it to generate electricity. For some reason, I do so much better in producing in life if I am excited, and very few things affect me negatively as much as being bored. It seems that as I have gotten older, I get bored much easier and quicker than I used to. So I have worked at figuring out how to deal with boredom in my life.

-The first thing is that I work at being responsible and faithful in doing what I am supposed to do even when I am bored out of my head. I can do that successfully for a while.

-The easiest way for me to deal with my boredom is to change what I am doing frequently. If I am reading and I feel myself getting demotivated I will switch to memorizing Bible verses, or writing my blog, or simply changing books. If I am sitting, I often get up and go work on my car or vice versa.

-Sometimes my boredom is simply being tired, which is much more of an issue in my life now, so I take a 30-minute nap if I am where I can do that. Sometimes a five-minute catnap will work wonders. Getting up and getting some celery sticks out of the fridge to munch on works also.

– In the bigger picture I need variety from day to day. A study day followed by a work outside day or a fishing trip. A week or even a couple of months of change, especially if it is a challenge is a major “exciter” in my life. I am going on a 62-day bicycle trip across the nation in May and June, and that will be a super energizer in my life.

One of the keys for me was to recognize the problem of boredom and acknowledge the need for variety without beating myself up for being lazy. It makes it so much easier to be proactive in solving the problem when I am not simply responding to guilt.

Certain situations in life make me nervous. I don’t know what is going to happen, and I am not sure what to do, if anything about it. When these kinds of situations show up I work hard at obeying the command not to be anxious about anything, but to pray about everything, but I find my mind going back and mulling over the situation, and I can feel my stomach getting in a knot. So I pray some more, and keep on praying every time I think about it. God promises to give me a peace that passes all comprehension and if I don’t have that peace it means I haven’t prayed enough about the situation. I also pray for wisdom so that I will say the right things and do the right things in regards to any solution I might bring.

In our present culture of pandemics, inflation, and constant upheaval in the news it is so easy to let anxiety stay in our mind. Being anxious about life isn’t good for our health, our spiritual growth, our relationships with others, or our productivity in life. Many tend to think that they have no choice but to be anxious, but when God commands against it we certainly do have a choice. It takes discipline and self-control but taking our thoughts captive is essential and doable.

We have had some really nice sunny weather for the last couple of days, but it is pouring rain right now. That is how life tends to be, in seasons. There is a season of sunshine when everything seems to be going good, nobody has COVID, jobs going well, kids are doing good, and we have a vacation planned and coming up soon.

But then it starts to rain, and one problem, crisis, trial after another comes sweeping into our life. I remind myself that even in Job’s life the trials ended and the sun shone.

Psalms 30:5 For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for a lifetime;
Weeping may last for the night,
But a shout of joy comes in the morning.

As we cycle through life, sunshine and rain, sunshine and rain, the ultimate will be when we cycle right into heaven, now that will be sunshine indeed.

Ecclesiastes 7:14 In the day of prosperity be happy,
But in the day of adversity consider—
God has made the one as well as the other.

“Consider,” think seriously, deeply, reflectively about life, God, our faith, eternity, our goals, character flaws. I write a lot during adversity putting down my questions, frustrations, lessons learned, and insights gotten.

God has made the as well as the other.

How would I respond if I were a Cincinnati Bengal player losing the Super Bowl? That would be a tough one. But most of us have had some kind of failure or disappointment that to us at the time was just as big of a deal. Mentally dealing with those kinds of situations in life in a positive way is a characteristic of strong people. Strong people have some basic self-talk lines and prayers down that are almost automatic in a tough situation.

I trust You Lord, and I know You are causing all things to work together for good in my life. Please help me in my unbelief and lack of trust.

I ask You for Your strength to manage this trial, failure, or disappointment. I will ask again and again until You give me Your strength.

I ask You for Your wisdom to know what to do, how to respond, what I should change or fix. I ask for wisdom to know what to say to others that would bless them and glorify You.

Lord, I confess to You that I am full of anxiety right now, would You please replace it with Your peace. You promised me that You would, I claim that promise now.

Lord, I want to rejoice as You have commanded me to do, but I am having a tough time doing that. Would You please fill me with Your joy despite my circumstances.

It usually takes numerous rounds of repeating these basic prayers, but are thinking will change and God will work as we do.