It would do us good to consider what Robert E. Lee said, “Knowing that intercessory prayer is our mightiest weapon and the supreme call for all Christians today, I pleadingly urge our people everywhere to pray. Believing that prayer is the greatest contribution that our people can make in this critical hour, I humbly urge that we take time to pray–to really pray. Let there be prayer at sunup, at noonday, at sundown, at midnight–all through the day. Let us all pray for our children, our youth, our aged, our pastors, our homes. Let us pray for our churches. Let us pray for ourselves, that we may not lose the word ‘concern’ out of our Christian vocabulary. Let us pray for our nation. Let us pray for those who have never known Jesus Christ and redeeming love, for moral forces everywhere, for our national leaders. Let prayer be our passion. Let prayer be our practice.”

Many are greatly troubled by things they don’t understand. Some feel God isn’t being fair or that everything is working against them rather than for them. How do you explain to a child the death of a parent? But as an old song says, “We’ll understand it better bye and bye”–indeed we will! Knowing his people were troubled by such thoughts, James Smith wrote the following to his church in 1840:

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”–Heb. 12:2-3

Amy Carmichael in Candles in the Dark writes that “The best training is to learn to accept everything as it comes, as from Him whom our soul loves. The tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life, silly little nothings, things you are ashamed of minding (at all). Yet they can knock a strong man over and lay him very low.”

I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but there have been times when I felt like giving up, quitting, throwing in the towel, etc. It is only by the grace of God that I didn’t. The only reason I didn’t give up is because the Lord never gave up on me. Although His suffering was much greater than mine He never hesitated for a second nor considered quitting. He “endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2), which was far more than I can imagine and unlike anything I will ever experience. He set His face like a flint and did the Father’s will. How then can I ever entertain for one second the thought of quitting? Compared to Him I have never suffered at all.

Someone else said of Heb. 12:2-3, “The writer calls to their mind the example of the Author and Perfecter of their faith to encourage his readers to ‘hang on’ despite the opposition which they were meeting with that endured by Messiah, and to do this in order that they would not be weary, fainting in their souls. Believers today need the same encouragement, especially in our culture which is sliding further and further from Biblical standards and into the abyss of paganism, debauchery and false spirituality, all of which are hostile toward Christianity.” I say “Amen!”. We can only endure by “Looking unto Jesus”.

Spurgeon, said,  “He carried His heavy cross, but we only carry a sliver or two of it; He drank His cup to the dregs, and we sip a drop or two at the very most. Consider how He suffered far more than you can ever suffer, and how He is now crowned with glory and honor. And as you are to be like Him, descend like Him into the depths of agony, that with Him you may rise to the heights of glory. The believer under persecution should remember that he is suffering no strange thing, but is only enduring that which fell upon his Master before him. Should the disciple expect to be above his Lord? “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household” (Matt 10:25)? If they had received Christ they would have received us, but since they reject both Christ and His sayings, the followers of Christ must expect that both their persons and their doctrines will be lightly esteemed. We are sometimes apt to think that a charge that is unfounded is very cruel to us. I have heard people say sometimes, and I have laughed when I have heard them say it, “Mr. So-and-so has charged me with such-and-such a thing, but I am quite innocent. I should not have minded if I had been guilty.” I have thought, “Then you ought to have minded it, but being innocent you have no cause to mind it at all.” But is it not so that the more unfounded a charge is, the more deeply it seems to cut us from the very wantonness of its cruelty? Well, then, you know how innocent the Savior was. The next time you feel innocent when you are thus accused “consider the one who endured such hostility by sinners against himself” (Heb 12:3), and who had to suffer both gross charges and unfounded ones.”

As a young preacher I loved the writings of Guy King. He gave us a good illustration when he said that there’s a gold running cup on another man’s mantel that could have been — should have been — on his own.  He was running toward the tape, coming in number one.  Somebody was trailing on his right, and he shot a look to see where he was. It was a split-second distraction that his competitor needed, and he flashed by him and won.  “Our sole safety [as Christians],” says Guy King, “is to be found in keeping our eyes averted . . . from others, and keeping them unswervingly ‘looking unto Jesus.‘”

The following illustration, from Our Daily Bread, emphasizes this basic principle of running the race with focus:

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first man in history to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Within 2 months, John Landy eclipsed the record by 1.4 seconds. On August 7, 1954, the two met together for a historic race. As they moved into the last lap, Landy held the lead. It looked as if he would win, but as he neared the finish he was haunted by the question, “Where is Bannister?” As he turned to look, Bannister took the lead. Landy later told a Time magazine reporter, “If I hadn’t looked back, I would have won!”

One of the most descriptive pictures of the Christian life in the Bible is of an athlete competing in a race. 1Corinthians 9:24-27 tells us that discipline is the key to winning. In Hebrews 12:1, 2, we are encouraged to lay aside anything that might hinder our spiritual advancement and to stay focused on Christ. And in Philippians 3:12, 13, the apostle Paul said, “I press on, . . . forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.”

Lord, give us endurance as we run this race of life. Help us not to wallow in past failures, but to be disciplined and to shun sinful ways. May we fix our eyes on the eternal goal set before us and keep looking unto Jesus.

Run the straight race through God’s good grace,
Lift up thine eyes and seek His face;
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path and Christ the prize.
–Monsell

You can’t make spiritual progress
by looking back.

“In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife.”–Luke 17:31–32

In this world of uncertainty, one thing is certain– Jesus is coming and the saints are going! That’s our “blessed hope”. That fact should affect the manner in which we live (1 John 3:1-3). As Dr. Paul Chappell said, “The Christian life is meant to be lived in only one direction—forward. Yet we are constantly tempted to look back to the world and the things that we left behind when we trusted Christ as Saviour. The danger is that if we keep looking back, sooner or later we will find a way to go back, regardless of the consequences. This is not new, because the Children of Israel faced the same danger when they left Egypt for the Promised Land. “And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned” (Hebrews 11:15). Rather than looking longingly to the past, we should keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.”

Charles Spurgeon used this metaphor of mountain climbing for our progress in the Christian life. “The Christian life is very much like climbing a hill of ice. You cannot slide up. You have to cut every step with an ice ax. Only with incessant labor in cutting and chipping can you make any progress. If you want to know how to backslide, leave off going forward. Cease going upward and you will go downward of necessity. You can never stand still. If you begin to slip on the side of a mountain of ice, the first slip may not hurt if you can stop and slide no further. But alas, you cannot so regulate sin! When your feet begin to slide, the rate of the descent increases, and the difficulty of arresting this motion is incessantly becoming greater. It is dangerous to backslide in any degree, for we know not to what it may lead.”