Faith that Endures

We love doing kids ministries here at Twin Lakes Church. You know why? Because when you minister to kids, it touches entire families, and we've been giving you example after example during this building faith series. I want you to watch this video as one example. Look at the screen. You know, I remember being young and not even looking for a church. And I remember passing by Twin Lakes, and to me, it always had been the church on the hill. But the black tie church, the church that, you know, growing up, guys like me didn't attend those kind of churches. And funny, we enrolled our kids at school here and had a chance to really experience that—the amount of love and grace that gets poured out on our kids. I remember thinking, my gosh, I want to go to school here, and ultimately, we ended up becoming part of this church, going to church here. It's this amazing environment from the principal all the way around to the maintenance guys, teachers, everybody is just so loving and so connected with Christ that we ended up going to church here as a result of that because we really wanted to be a part of that. And that's exactly what we found: our church families, our school family, and everybody really, really is focused on God, and we all get to walk in faith as one great church family through life.

I've struggled with, you know, trying to see God. I wanted to see God so badly, and I was trying to walk with sight. And as I closed my eyes, I realized that God wants me to see Him through my children, through my family, through my wife. And that's where, you know, I think we've created these phenomenal relationships, these amazing connections with God through this church, and it all came through the school, through my children. And by the way, their youngest was one of the kids that was singing in the choir this weekend. So as Mark mentioned, we've been talking about this thing for months, and today is Commitment weekend. We're going to collect all of our pledges at the end of the service, and then next weekend, Celebration weekend, when we reveal the pledge totals, I think it's going to be exciting. Don't miss it. All right, enough said. Now grab these message notes that are in the middle of your bulletins as we get toward the end of our faith building series. It's kind of a 40-day study of the topic of faith.

As you get those messages out, I want to give you another heads up. Next week, I would love to share stories of how this 40-day exercise in faith has impacted your life. How has God grown your faith? Email me at René at TLC org. Maybe He stretched your faith. Maybe God has challenged your faith through this. Maybe He strengthened your faith. Maybe the whole thing of being in a small group has impacted you or going out in the community and making a difference for Christ that way. I want you to write the majority of the sermon next weekend, so please send me pictures, stories, video. What has God been up to in your life? I think we'd all be encouraged. Now this morning, I want to talk about how to get faith that endures. Let me start with this. I don't know what you're going to be doing on Thanksgiving morning at 7:50 a.m., but here's what I'll be doing. I will be running in the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot. It is a six-mile race. Now, some of you are going, why would you be doing that on a holiday, René? Some of you understand how awesome this is. Those are two camps that were neatly divided.

How many of you love running? Can I see a show of hands? You love it. This sounds good to you. How many of you would not run if you were being chased by a pack of ravenous wolves? Can I see that show of hands? Okay. Well, this is a benefit for Second Harvest Food Bank; that's one of the reasons I'm doing it, and it's also just flat out fun. I don't know if you know this, but the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot over in San Jose is the biggest turkey trot little 10-kilometer run in the country. It has 28,000 runners in it—28,000! So I know I won't come in dead last. Everybody gets so excited. The starting line is so fun. It is like a party. They actually have a costume contest for the runners, and these are some of the costumes from last Thanksgiving. Of course, there aren't turkeys, right? And there are the traditional Thanksgiving chickens. I think this is an easier costume to get, but it's also very popular. Then there's also poultry being chased by a chef. Made great time, very motivated to run fast, right? There's also, of course, the mascots from all the local teams that show up. Indiana Jones was there last year, being motivated to run because he was chased by a boulder. And the winner of the costume contest last year was this spine. Isn't that amazing? And of course, the whole team had to run together in a line or they'd be out of alignment. Thank you. I need a rimshot.

Now, question for you: how many of these costumed runners do you think you'd see at the finish line? Not many. In fact, here's a picture of the lead runners toward the end of the race last year— not a costumed runner in sight. My point is this: the start of any race can be like a party, so much fun and balloons and hoopla, but the end of a race is like a race, right? It is hard. And this same principle applies to all of life. Starting anything is a blast. Finishing anything is a lot harder than starting. Would you agree with me on that? I mean, it applies to anything. In fact, let's do a quick poll. Show of hands: how many of you have ever tried a home improvement project at home? Anybody ever tried a home improvement project? How many of you would agree that finishing a home improvement project is much harder than starting one, right? How many of you have an unfinished home improvement project at your house right now? Me too.

How many married people here? Can I see a show of hands? Anybody married here? All right. How many of you would agree that being married is harder than getting married? Can I see a show of hands? Now, come on. This is church; you can't lie. Everybody about the newlyweds should have their hands raised right now. How many parents do we have here? Show of hands. How many parents do we have? All right. Good parents. How many of you would agree that raising kids is way harder than conceiving kids? Can I see your hands? Generally speaking, I mean now. Well, that's exactly what we want to talk about today—conceiving kids? No, having faith. Building faith is not just a 40-day sprint. We've been studying it for about 40 days. It's a marathon. And here's why I wanted to talk about this toward the end of the series. I really feel like our church has been experiencing something amazing here this fall. A lot of people have been talking to me about we've had this rush of adrenaline, right? So now how do we keep that enthusiasm going? It's a rush to pledge today, but this is like the starting line of the race. You know, there's balloons, there's confetti. We even go—we've got a concert tonight that's going to be full of so much fun. But this is the starting line. How do you not just get excited about Commitment weekend, but stay focused for the next four years? What's the key to endurance in anything in the life of faith?

Well, in this series, we've gone to Hebrews 11 a lot. It's the great faith chapter in the Bible, and in the very next chapter, the first two or three verses of Hebrews 12, the writer says this, and I want us all to read these verses out loud together. So we put them on the screen. Let me hear you. Here we go: We have around us many people whose lives tell us what faith means. So let us run the race that is before us and never give up. Now say those three words with me again, the last three words in that sentence. Say it: Never give up. Say those words again: Never give up. Listen, maybe you walked in the doors this morning and you are ready to give up on something in your life. Well, Hebrews 12 says that there are four things you need to do if you want to finish up when you feel like giving up. Let me just tell you, this is very personal for me, as you'll hear at the end of this message. These are things in my own life, principles that I've got to keep returning to again and again to keep going. So jot these down.

Number one: run encouraged. You say, I'd love to; how can I do that? Well, let me tell you, when the book of Hebrews in the Bible was written 20 centuries ago, sports was the dominant popular entertainment. Any city of any size had a stadium, often a huge stadium even by modern standards. The largest of these sports arenas, the Circus Maximus in Rome, could seat 350,000 people. Can you believe that? This was in the time of Christ. And so the writer of the Hebrews is saying, try to imagine that you are in a stadium like that, that you're in one of those races, that you're one of the runners on the track running your race, and you look up and the crowd is going crazy, cheering for you. You know, cheering—there's nothing like that. Have you ever been in a stadium that is just rocking with cheers? Have you ever experienced that firsthand? I told some of you before that one year I was assisting as a lowly runner for an NFL Films crew up at Candlestick Park, and it was a ball. It was a Monday night game, and it was very special because at halftime, the Niners honored Jerry Rice that year and retired his number. And so they set up a portable stage at halftime, and Jerry Rice and all these other living 49er legends were there. I mean, Joe Montana, Steve Young, you know, Brent Jones, of course Jerry—they were all standing up there on stage, and there was the NFL Films cameraman who was allowed right up next to the stage. None of the other cameramen were, and then there was me. I was standing right next to the guy. Now, picture this. You got to visualize. I did not have a camera; I didn't have a microphone. There was nothing marking me as part of the NFL Films crew. I was there just in case he needed something, in which case, as the runner, I would run back to the booth where the assistant cameraman Patrick was, and I could bring the cameraman whatever he needed. So I'm just kind of standing there with him, and everybody's going crazy. They're cheering for Jerry; they're cheering for all these people. And all these guys start to walk off stage, and they walk down the steps right past me. Now they're on the field level, literally right next to me. The cameraman's right there, and then they stop right on the field because the stands are going nuts, cheering themselves hoarse. And so these guys stop and they wave up at the crowd, just standing right next to me. I mean, I'm looking literally like Jerry Rice is here, and I'm looking at Jerry, and I'm looking at Joe Montana's right here, and Steve Young and Brent Jones, and here I am, René Schlut, standing right here. And I look at these guys, and I look up at the stands, and I listen to the stands, and then I waved. I just stood there. That is a totally true story. I just stood there like this and I smiled at the guys because I figured, what are they going to do to me, throw me out? It was totally worth it for that moment. I am not exaggerating this a bit. I caught Jerry's eye; he's waving. He looks at me like, what do you think you're doing? And I was just like this to the crowd. And you know, some guy was up there with binoculars with like his son going, there's Jerry, there's Joe, there's Steve. Who's the gray-haired guy? Look at him, he must have been a kicker. You know, I don't know what they thought. It was awesome.

But now try to imagine that you're in that situation, and you're hearing all these cheers just resonating in the stadium, and then you look up into the stands, and you see Jerry and Joe and Steve or whoever are your heroes. They're not on the field; they're in the stands, and they are cheering for you. They're your biggest fans. They are rooting you on. And the writer of the Hebrews is saying that's kind of exactly what is happening spiritually for you. Hebrews 12:1 says, therefore, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. What great cloud of witnesses? All these great heroes of faith that he's just been talking about in Hebrews 11. Look up in the stands; there's Abraham, and there's Moses, there's Jacob, there's David, there's Samson. Hey, there's Rahab, and they're on their feet rooting for you. I mean, this isn't the Bible, folks. That's pretty exciting.

Now, to help you picture this some more, I got to show you a great video. There's a 13-year-old girl who goes here to Twin Lakes Church. She's in eighth grade at Baymont Middle School. Her name's Emily Erickson, and Emily was diagnosed in 2010 with leukemia. Many of us have been praying for her ever since. She's been in a wheelchair because of the treatments for a long time. Well, this fall, just a couple of weeks ago, she decided to run as best she could the Baymont Fun Run and get up out of her wheelchair and use leg braces and run and walk this race. Now, Emily was the last person to finish the race, but I want you to watch how spontaneously the other kids gather around and encourage her as she crosses the finish line. Look at the screen. And there she goes into the funnel at the end of the race. Aren't you encouraged? Aren't you encouraged by Emily's spirit? Don't you love that? And by these kids who just cheer her on, just lift her heart? Well, don't miss this: that is happening to you, that scene right there. You're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses cheering you on, going, go, go, go, go. And it's not just Abraham and Moses and Isaac and Jacob. I think of all the great people of faith who've gone on that I know. You know, I think of Pastor Craft, who was pastor of this church for 80 years. I think of my dad. Maybe you think of your grandparents or your parents or maybe a child, and they are cheering you on. Go! That's an awesome picture.

Now, maybe you're thinking, not me. Somebody actually told me one time when I was explaining this, René, if those people can all see me right now, they are booing because I keep falling, right? But have you ever been in a stadium when a football player gets injured after a play? Everybody holds their breath, and then when he gets back up and walks off the field, the loudest cheers of the day are for that guy because he got back up again. I got back into the game. You see, that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds you, they know what it means to fall—all those people. I mean, think of their stories: Abraham and Jacob and Moses and David. They all know personally what it means to fall and experience God's grace, so they're cheering you on right now. Don't give up. So run encouraged.

And number two: run light. Run light. And here's what I mean by that. You know, I've been running now for a few years, and I wouldn't say I was very good, but I do enjoy it a lot. One of the things I've discovered is how they make shirts and shorts and shoes and socks specifically for running. These things are made out of space-age material of some kind because they are as light as a feather. And this is huge because when you're running a half marathon or even a 10K, if you're wearing like a normal weight t-shirt and shorts, it can start to feel like chainmail, and it chafes you, and it's just not very comfortable. Now, by contrast, I want to show you this true story: a man named Lloyd Scott ran the London Marathon in a 120-pound antique diving suit. Look at this picture. His goal was to become the slowest marathon runner ever in history, and in fact, he finished the London Marathon in five days, eight hours, 29 minutes, and 46 seconds. And so he achieved his goal. Now, last year, he ran the London Marathon this way, pulling a 10-foot-long, 200-pound dragon while wearing a 100-pound suit of armor, right? Well, I thought to myself, that right there is a picture of so many people trying to run the faith marathon but weighed down with worries, with addictions, with bad habits, with sins. And that's why the writer to the Hebrews goes on to say, and so let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Now, he says we need to get rid of two things here: first, everything that hinders. The King James translates this as every weight. It doesn't have to be something wrong; it's just whatever is weighing you down. He's saying, don't run a marathon wearing a backpack. Some of you have been going, how come this race of faith is so hard, so hard to follow Christ? Well, maybe you're making it necessarily difficult because you're carrying a backpack, right?

I was looking through this backpack and thinking of all the things that potentially you could be carrying that weigh you down. For example, some of you are being weighed down right now by worries, and you want to be Christ-like. You want to run the race of faith; you want to encourage other people, but every night you wake up in the middle of the night worrying. Every commute you spend it worrying. You're worried about what other people think of you; you're worried about what's going to happen tomorrow, and it's weighing you down. Others are handicapped by another huge weight that's got you in its grip, and that's some sort of weight of a bad habit in your life. And you've been carrying it around with you for years and years and years, and it's slowing you down in the race of faith. Others, you know what the most common weight I see in people's backpacks is? The weight of bitterness, the weight of resentment over something that people have done to you in your past that you just can't seem to let go. That's why in the same chapter later on, the author says, see to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.

This last week, I read about a guy who successfully ran all the way from New York to San Francisco. Can you believe that? All the way across the country—3,000 miles. He was asked about the toughest obstacle he had encountered along the way. Now think of it: New York to San Francisco. What do you think he would have said was his biggest obstacle? He said it was not the steep slopes of the Rockies or the hot stretches of the desert. The thing that came the closest to defeating me was the sand in my shoes. He said there were times he almost obsessed about it. Some of you, you don't have a giant weight in your backpack. There's not some big sin you still feel guilty about or some big worry, but you've got a ton of sand, and it's weighing you down. It's sand; it's all kinds of little pet grievances, just one after another, little pet peeves, little minor annoyances of things that people have done to you or stupid things that you've done to yourself that you just won't let go, and they are weighing you down in the race of faith. You've got to get rid of all the excess baggage, everything that hinders you, and the sin that so easily entangles.

Now, in the original Greek, the writer uses a definite article, "the sin." He seems to be referring specifically to a specific sin that is likely to entangle you. What is the sin that so easily entangles you? It's different for all sorts of people in this room. Well, it's got to go, even if everybody else is doing it because it's entangling you in the race of faith. Now again, some of you are thinking, it's too late for me; I've already blown it. I've tripped up so many times in the race; it's too late. I may as well quit. Some of you, the weight that you're carrying is guilt over a sin that has entangled you. But I want to say two things about that. First, if you believe that on the cross, Jesus Christ took away your guilt, that He died as the payment for your sins, then as the Bible says, there is therefore now no condemnation for you in Christ. You can put down that guilt because God doesn't mean for you to bear it; you can run light.

The second thing I want to say is if you feel like I keep falling and falling and falling and falling, surely they're not cheering me on anymore. Surely God wants me to just quit because I've been such a disappointment. I want to say to you, it does not matter how many times you fall in the race of faith because the race is not over. How do I know? You're still alive, and that means your race of faith is still on. If you're listening to my words right now, your race isn't over because you're breathing. And so get back up and keep going because amazing miracles can happen when you do. I want you to see something. A few years ago, at the college indoor track and field championships, a student named Heather Dornadin became famous for this. Watch the screen.

The ball down gets up quickly, but that's going to cost her. Lucky she wasn't injured. Her teammate just went to the front, though, so they may be able to recover from that. And Gordon is flying down the back. She is going to catch Fondor, and she may catch the leader. She's got Fondor. That is amazing to fall in a 600. Wow! They're just screaming, you know, because it's the most amazing thing that they have ever seen. And I want to tell you the same thing applies to you. It does not matter how many times you have fallen; it does not matter how slowly you start the race. What matters is that you keep getting back up and finish it. Who cares how many times you've messed up in life? God doesn't. God doesn't; He offers pardon. What matters is how you're going to end it. What are you going to do from here on out, starting today? And that ties right into point three: run steady. Run steady, not run fast, not run harder. Just run steady. Keep on keeping on.

The rest of verse one says, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. It doesn't say with speed, but with perseverance the race marked out for us. Wired magazine—have you ever seen that? They did a study called the perfect human. It was a magazine article about this guy, Dean Karnazes. And I want you to listen to this article. It starts: Dean Karnazes was slobbering drunk. It was his 30th birthday, and he'd started with a beer, moved on to tequila at a bar near his home in San Francisco, and now an attractive woman—not his wife—was hitting on him. This was not the life he had envisioned for himself. He wanted to vomit. Instead, he slipped out of the bar and walked to his house, where he found an old pair of sneakers. He put them on and, while still drunk, started running. He sobered up around Daly City, decided to keep running, and when the sun came up, Karnazes was trotting south along Highway 1 near Santa Cruz. It was like a religious conversion, he said. He called his wife from a payphone, and an hour later, she found him in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in Santa Cruz. He got in the car and passed out. That was August 1992. Over the next 20 years, Karnazes has challenged almost every known endurance running limit. Listen to this: at age 44, he completed 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days, one in each of the 50 states—just an amazing feat. The last one was in New York City. And after he was done with the race, his 50th marathon in New York City, he decided to run home to San Francisco. It's just an amazing guy. You talk about somebody who knows how to run steady. By the way, I'm going to try to get Dean to speak here. Somebody just told me, well, I know Dean. I just had a meeting with Dean; he's a believer. I said, can you get him to speak here? He said, I don't think it'll be a problem. So yes, we'll try to get him next year. But talk about somebody who knows how to run. He'll tell anybody, he goes, look, I'm not an elite runner in that I never win these marathons, but he said, I know how to finish. He says one of the biggest lessons he's learned is that pain really is needed for gain. He says somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. Would you agree with that? Any goal worth achieving involves an element of risk and pain. Any goal worth achieving.

And you know the writer to the Hebrews would agree. The word used for race here is the Greek word agon. That's the word we get our English word agony from because racing is agony at times. And as your pastor, I want you to understand the race of faith is tough sometimes. Sometimes it is agony. This is not heaven, and there'll be times that you and I will start to get discouraged. You'll get discouraged with yourself; you'll get discouraged with God; you'll get discouraged with your circumstances, and you'll think maybe marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be. Maybe getting a college degree isn't all it's cracked up to be. Maybe my walk of faith isn't all it's cracked up to be, and you'll want to quit. Why did I even start this stupid race anyway? That is not the end; that's just hitting the wall, as runners say. Keep going. So how do you keep going? How do you endure past the wall? This is huge. The key to endurance is training.

Now, what do I mean by that? I want you to flip over to pages two and three of your notes. We write daily meditations every single week that tie into the message. We've tried to kick-start this habit with the faith building book during this series, but listen, there's a memory verse right there each week. Get into the habit of doing those. Dive into daily training, and you'll see it makes a huge difference. Now flip your notes back to page one and notice the very bottom verse there in Hebrews 12. Later on, the author returns to the race metaphor. Now look at these words: therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. These are the words of an athletic coach. He's saying don't run the race in a way that will injure you. Think about this: a lot of Christians that I've known in the name of endurance have kept working so hard for Jesus, but they never strengthened what was weak in their lives. And so what was a little bit sprained got broken. You know, in their spirit or emotionally, they heard some message at some point on running the marathon of faith, and they thought that meant become a workaholic for Jesus, and they ruined their lives. And they ruined their well-being. But I don't want you to hear that in this message. Run steady does not mean kill yourself. In fact, the exact opposite: run steady is pace yourself. Think of what you need to do spiritually to stay healthy for the long run. Your church needs you to stay healthy spiritually for the long run, not just for a weekend sprint. The world needs you to stay healthy for the long run; God needs you to stay healthy for the long run. So run steady, run light, run encouraged, and finally, fourth, run focused.

Run focused. The most motivating thing you can do as a Christian is to focus on Jesus Christ. Verse two: let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scoring its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Now, don't miss this: He endured the cross, this says, why? For the joy set before Him. Now, metaphorically, Jesus is running this race, and there's some reward, there's some gold, there's a prize, there's a medal, there's a joy set before Him, and He's running the race for that joy. What was that joy? It wasn't just, you know, being with the Father again in heaven. What was it that He accomplished on the cross? What was the prize for His suffering? It was you and me. The joy set before Him was what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, dying for our sins and rising again to empower us so that we could be with Him in glory. We are the joy that was set before Him. And that's your joy. The Bible says one day in heaven, you will see Jesus as His pure and spotless bride, and that means all the sin, all the tears, all the disease, all the pain, all the grief that can cripple you will one day all be gone in resurrected perfection. That's the prize that awaits after the finish line; that's the goal. And so for the joy set before you, you can endure the cross, scoring its shame because there's a prize awaiting you that is beyond your wildest imagination.

You know, I'll tell you something very personal. Several years ago now, I was thinking—actually, I was so discouraged. I was thinking of quitting the ministry. I was here thinking of quitting as a pastor, and I was starting to wonder what else I could do. Maybe I could go back into radio or something. It was a very discouraging time, and at the end of the sermon one day, a man came up to me that I hadn't seen in decades. His name is Fred Moody, and Fred comes up to me and says, you know, I knew your dad, and so I was immediately interested because I barely knew my dad. As many of you know, I was four when he died of cancer. And so Fred's—I said, how did you know him? I was his best friend. And Fred says, you know, I was actually with your dad when he died, when he breathed his last at Good Samaritan Hospital over in San Jose. And now I'm really riveted. I said, really? What was it like? What did he say? What did he do? And Fred said, well, you know, he didn't say a lot toward the end, but he sang a lot. I said, seriously? He sang? I said, what did he sing? He said, well, he specifically sang one song over and over that gave him a lot of comfort, and it was this. The lyrics went, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. And he said, I saw that happen for your dad. The things of this world grew strangely dim for him until he just slowly saw Jesus and saw Him in the light of His full glory and grace. And I thanked Fred, and I don't think Fred ever knew how much that meant to me because I went home that day and I thought about how if I fix my eyes on Jesus, then the things of this world that worry me, that annoy me, that stress me out, that tempt me, grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and His grace. Hundreds of times since Fred Moody told me that, I've reminded myself of the lyrics of that song, and I thought, said to myself, turn your eyes on Christ and let the things of this world grow dim in the light of His glory and grace. I recommend it to you because the same thing is true for you. The things that stress you and anger you and annoy you and tempt you—and we all have those things; we're all just human—but they'll go strangely dim if you think of His glory, His power, and His grace, His love toward you.

And that's really what distinguishes this message from some self-improvement talk because the big idea is not try harder or run harder or bear down. The big idea is to trust Jesus because the more you fix your eyes on Christ, take my word for it, the easier it is to lay aside every weight and run with endurance. And so let me just ask you this: what's the next step in the race of faith for you? I don't know what it is for you; it's different for everybody in this room. But let me give you some suggestions. Maybe you're in the grind-it-out phase of the race. You're somewhere in the lonely middle miles of the marathon. You're running in the dark; you're running in the rain; you're running in the pain. Maybe you're a mom at home with little kids, and you're working, and you're taking care of an elderly relative, and the grind's just wearing you down. Or maybe you're giving your life to some job that's just sucking the life out of you. How do you last when you're hitting the wall like that? Well, you know what helps more than anything else? Finding running partners. So if that's a picture of you, maybe your next step is to reach out. You can call the church and get what we call a Stephen minister, somebody who's been trained to come alongside of you, or join a small group. Make a phone call, make some friends, call a friend you haven't spoken to in years, and maybe you're both in the same spot. You can encourage one another.

Some of you are in the sprint toward the end of the race. You are winded; you are exhausted, but the goal's in sight. Don't give up; keep your eyes on Christ. We are cheering you on. Some of you are weighed down by some sin in your life or by some guilt or by some worry. Today is the day to lay it down and determine maybe it's some addiction that's got its claws in you. You know, we have 12-step groups that meet here, Christian-based, Mondays and Thursdays. You wouldn't believe how many people in this room right now gather in those groups every single week because we need it. We need each other to run as partners in this. That's your opportunity to lay it down or call a pastor and make an appointment. Some of you are at the starting line. You've just recently begun your race of faith. To endure past the first couple of miles, you need to start regular habits, start faithful habits of Bible reading and Bible memory and hanging out with Christian friends.

Now there's one last group of people here, and that might be people who are thinking about starting the race. You've been coming with friends or something. You've been thinking about getting into the race or getting back into it—the race of faith I'm talking about. We've been studying it for seven weeks. You've been considering it. What better morning than Commitment weekend to decide to make a commitment yourself and say, God, you say, I don't know if I can finish the race. God will help you each mile, but He can't help you until you start. He can't help you with the next step until you take the first step. And so today would be a great day to just say, God, I want to pray a prayer of starting and surrender to You wherever you're at. Let's just pray together right now for God to empower us to take the next step. Bow your heads with me.

Lord, I just want to pray for everybody here today. May they, may we all be able to say what Paul said at the end of his life: I finished the race; I kept the faith. Life is often very tough, and often we all can feel like giving up. I'm sure there's a lot of people here today who have been at the quitting point in the last week in some area, and I just pray that you'd strengthen them. Help them finish whatever race they're in to complete what You have begun in their lives because there are so many blessings that come from endurance and lasting through the wall when we want to quit. Now I want to invite everybody to just pray quietly in your heart. Say something like, dear Father in heaven, thank You for Your glory and grace. I want to finish the race. Please fill me with power through Your risen Son, Jesus Christ. Now maybe you want to take that very first step, and you might want to pray something like this: Lord, I don't understand all of this stuff, but I know I want to follow You. So I choose to place my trust in Christ and fix my eyes on Him, my Savior and my Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.