THE ULTIMATE PRIZE
It was Super Bowl 51 in 2017. Patriots vs. Falcons. The Patriots were down 28-3 at the end of the 3rd quarter. No one had won a game with that kind of deficit..it looked impossible. Eric Liddell, a Scottish university student, who would eventually become a missionary in China, was scheduled to compete in the 1924 summer Olympics, potentially to win two gold medals, for the 400 meters and the 100 meters. But, the race for the 100 mm was on Sunday. It was a conflict with his strong conviction of not working on Sunday. I was in my 11th mile of the La Jolla half marathon, something I had been training months to run, when suddenly I “hit the wall”, a description of when a runners body is completely depleted of its energy source called glycogen. Competing to win the prize, the ultimate prize, will cost you something. What determines you to “ finish the race”, to “win”, will depend on what you are competing for…it will be that prize that motivates you to get you over the finish line. We may not all be atheltes but we will all experience a time in our life when it will take everything out of us to finish…to finish our chemo treatment, our last day of the job we loved, to say good bye to our last child who leaves home, to bury the one who made our hearts skip a beat, to leave our home of the 30 years and move to the unknown. Whatever it is in your life it will require a reason to go forward..to finish the race for the ultimate prize. In 1 Cor. 9:24-25 it reads; “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable”. Tom Brady, the quarterback for that Patriot game, came back and won the Super Bowl , 34-28. Liddell did not run in the 100 mm but he went on to win the gold medal for the 400 meter. Another runner next to me, saw that I had run out of energy, so he quoted Scripture to me, one step at a time, until I crossed over the finish line. You may have run out of your energy source, or lost your motivation for going forward….…don’t give up….the ultimate prize for our lives is NOT the perishable but the imperishable…our real race is about Jesus. He will give us our purpose, our strength, our final prize….Look to Him in whatever circumstance you are in and let Him be the one to bring you over the finish line. Because at the end of the day, it will be His words “ Well done, good and faithful servant”, that will be our ultimate prize…..