Running the Race

This morning, I tweeted: "If we are constantly trying to make our following of God look like someone else's, we will never truly be able to follow Jesus, personally." I wanted to expound on that just a touch more because it is something that is pretty near and dear to my heart and something that I have struggled with for most of my Christian life.

It is interesting to me how much we try to make our lives look like those of others. It's the essence of the American Dream. We want what someone else has so that we can say that we have the same thing as them. We have Comcast, but we want DirecTV because "so and so" has it and it has 15 more HD channels. Or we have to have a great looking haircut because we have to look better than "so and so." If you haven't felt that part of the flesh before, look out, because it's coming. I can promise you.

Here's the deal gang: You can't run someone else's race.

There are a number of places in the Bible where people's pursuit of Christ were completely different from many others and they still glorified Christ; perhaps even more, because their path was different and unique to them. Not to mention two, very obvious, places where we are charged us to run our race:

Ephesians 2:10- "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Hebrews 12:1-2- "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

More on this later, but today, let's commit to running our race.