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March 24 – Run to Win · The Daily Word

• Cory Barnes: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night whenever you are joining us. Welcome to the Daily Word podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey and it is my privilege to lead our Catawba campus. Excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode. In case you're joining us. and you're new here. What we're doing on this podcast is every day we're sitting down together and we're doing a devotion based on the new Testament portion of the Bible reading plan that our church is engaging in, which comes from the life journal. If you don't know where to find that plan, you can go to lakeshorecf.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on journaling. You'll be able to access it there. And we also put it in the description of every podcast episode. You can find it there as well. And for the podcast, are doing devotions using the SOAP method. S-O-A-P, scripture, observation, application, and prayer. It's very simple. You'll catch it as we go. Let's get into today, March the 24th, reading from 1 Corinthians 9. And what stood out to me comes from verses 24 and 25. Reading from the New King James Version. Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable So this section here in chapter nine of first Corinthians kind of works as a transition from one topic that Paul is discussing his apostleship and his qualification is to be an apostle. And he's transitioning to talk about some specific issues he wants to address that revolve around eating meat sacrificed to idols. So basically from transitioning to one thought, that he wants to talk about to another, he's starting off by laying out a principle that is going to govern everything that he's about to say. And that principle is how we live our life. and to help the church at Corinth understand what he's saying, he uses this analogy of a race. He compares us as Christians to runners running a race. This would have been something the Corinthians would have been familiar with. They had local games and races where people would race and then the winner would be given a crown that was woven together out of palm leaves and Paul is talking about the fact that our Christian life, he's likening it onto a race because there's a couple things that racers do that he wants to show the people, the believers at Corinth that believers should do as well. He talks about the fact that they run the race as if they want to win it. See, he's addressing right now, Christians that are just kind of floating. They're just, they've accepted Jesus, they're walking with him-ish, but they're not actually pursuing spiritual depth. the first thing he here is all the runners run the race, only of them gets the prize. They all run like they actually want the prize. That's the first thing. ⁓ that we take away. And the other thing is that everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. This is something we're familiar with. We know that athletes have to be disciplined in what they're doing. We just got through watching the Winter Olympics in February, you know, those Winter Olympics, those athletes spend their whole lives up to that point training to come to the Olympics. Even the people, they're on their skates with a broom in front of that big rock. They're sliding down the ice. Those people train their whole lives for that little moment to go ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch Discipline, don't give in to the dictates of the flesh. Don't just live life however you want to live it. They all run for the purpose of winning and they all are temperate. They all are disciplined. They don't just do anything they want to do because their eyes are set on the prize and they recognize that in order for me to win this race, I don't need to eat that Twinkie. In order for me to win this race, I have to get up and I have to train. So Paul is pointing all this out because those runners in a race, they're all chasing after what he calls a perishable crown. was literally palm leaves that were woven together. That's not going to sit on your bookshelf for the rest of your life without deteriorating. It was perishable. Like it wouldn't even necessarily last a lifetime, but we as Christians are running after an imperishable crown. Now these This crown, these crowns, rather they're talked about throughout scripture. The crowns that we get are prized in eternity. There's images in scripture of saints throwing their crowns at the feet of Jesus. Second Timothy four talks about a crown of righteousness. James one 12 talks about a crown of life. First Peter. 5 4 talks about a crown of glory and revelation to 10 talks about a victors crown. There are crowns that scripture points to that are our prize for running our race in life. And we get so set, we get our eyes so caught up in this temporary life and what we're trying to accomplish here that we fail to see. that ultimately the true prize comes after our bodies are no longer breathing and that those are the crowns that we run after. So we should run after those crowns as if we actually want to get them. We should recognize that in order to get those crowns, those eternal rewards, it takes discipline, it takes being temperate, it takes moderation. It takes not allowing the lust and the taste of the flesh to rule us, but us rule over them. covered scripture. read scripture observation. We've talked about Oplica observation there. Let's look at application. Let's just talk to the Lord. him, Lord, will you examine me? Am I running my life? like I actually have purpose? Am I running my life like I actually want to win the race? Am I actually running my life for your eternal reward and not the rewards that this life has to offer? Imperishable crowns that I don't get to take with me? Am I being temperate in all things? We can do a self search on this. there areas in my life that are excessive? Are there areas of my life that I need to dial back because they're getting in the way? They're damaging. When other people look at my life, how they see my example of a Christian that's walking with Jesus, are those things getting in the way? And we can set our goal to be to pursue the Lord mindful of the fact that he has a reward for us waiting in eternity. Let's pray. Father, I thank you. I thank you that every time we come to your word, you open it up and you show us your goodness. You speak to us through your word. I thank you, Lord, that you have given us such a tangible way of understanding what this life is like. We all know the image of a runner in a race. And I thank you Lord for showing us our race. I thank you for showing us the race you have set before us and helping us to run that race for the point of winning the prize. The prize is your reward for us in eternity. Being able to delight in you, being able to have something to throw at your feet in eternity. Lord, I pray that you would help us to recognize areas in our life where we need temperance, where we need moderation, where we need to scale back. And I thank you, Lord, for giving us the grace to do that. Lord, we look forward to sitting at your feet and casting those crowns to you in eternity, Lord. It's one of our, one of my fondest pictures and things to think of. We love you, Jesus, and we're so thankful for you. Amen.