Run your race in light of the assignment: "the race marked out for us." We do not invent the Christian faith or way of life. The beginning, all the course of life, and the end are already marked out for us. We must not run wildly or in any direction we fancy, but conform to the laws of the race. Our Forerunner has already passed over the course and His steps mark the way.

Part of the assignment is to run with perseverance. A major theme of the text is the rock-ribbed commitment, "I will finish the race." Perseverance does not always pay immediately, but it does pay ultimately. In the making of paper a great deal of preliminary processes have to be done. If you watch the pulp wood passing through process after process you are struck by how unlike paper the processed material is. Until the very last moment the pulpy substance remains wholly unfit for use as paper, and very much unlike paper, until the final shake brings the particles together and it suddenly rolls off the cylinder as a hard white surface we call paper.

This is the reason for perseverance in running the race. You may feel that you are never going to get things together. You may look at the mixture that is your life and despair at any given moment. Perseverance runs the race in light of the fact that at God's moment it will comp together.

Fix Your Eyes

There is a higher encouragement for running the race. There is another One far above the cloud of witnesses. He is not included with them but above them. He Himself ran the race, but in a way that no other witness ever ran that race.

The apostle pleads, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus." The word contains first a prefix that means to look away from all else. We are to look at Him by looking away from all else. We are never to fix our eyes on what hinders us, the sin that besets us, the course, the other runners, or even the cloud of witnesses. We are to look away from all of them toward Him. This is a real warning about fatal distractions in the Christian life.

Some 7,000 autos collide with trains at level grade crossings each year, and 650 people are killed. There are 225,000 such crossings in the United States and only 27,000 locomotives. This means that there are far too many such accidents for the number of vehicles involved. Why does this happen? Trains are large. Research indicates that the larger an object is, the slower it appears to move. When a train and car on a collision course move toward each other, the driver really does not see the train move. This illusion causes both of them to arrive at the crossing at the same time. The driver's eye is off the crossing and on the train in a kind of fatal hypnotism. We are to look away.

We are to fix our eyes on Jesus -- not only initially but perpetually. Here the emphasis rests on His humanity, our elder brother in the family of God. We are to look on Him as One who has run the race.

We are to look on Him as the Perfect Example of faith. He is the author, leader, prince, captain of the life of faith. The faith of all others is diluted or adulterated. His is the perfect example.