How committed are you to finishing your race strong? When we determine to do whatever it takes, we will accomplish what we set out to do. After a sermon series called Frame of Mind that my husband preached on fighting the good fight of faith with the right frame of mind, I wrote this poem.
FRAME OF MIND
In the great fight of life, we more than overcome
With our eyes on the Savior, we will fight until we’ve won
Whatever comes against us, we know God lives within
To make this fight a good fight, to be a fight we win
In the great race of life, we’re committed to the end
With our eye on the finish, we won’t break and we won’t bend
In this great life of faith, we’ll be faithful, strong and sure
We’ll keep our eyes on Jesus and we’ll live a life that’s pure
We’ll be keepers of the faith, we’ll guard what’s true and right
We’ll represent God well, living upright through the fight
We have this frame of mind, that also was in Christ
He willing laid down, both his will and his Life
He’s received His prize, now we stand, and fight, and run
Looking unto Jesus, we’ll complete what we’ve begun!
Be encouraged today to run the race, fight the good fight of faith and finish strong!
I love the Summer Olympics, and am so sad they are already done for 4 more years.
I hope your summer is going great and you are having a really great time, enjoying the outdoors, and getting stronger physically everyday. Good fitness starts right now. The good habits you establish when you are young give you a better chance of including fitness in your life for your entire life. So have you been outdoors, playing, shooting hoops, kicking a soccer ball, running around, playing football, playing baseball, going swimming or playing volleyball? Why not take time to get outside everyday and do something that makes you more fit! This summer the Olympics will be happened in Rio. You know the athletes that made it to the Olympics have practiced hard. Those athletes have trained their very best and aimed for excellence in their sport. They have learned that perseverance is necessary to fulfill their dreams of greatness, so that they can be and do all that God has for them. I hope you know that too! I hope you go for God’s best in your life.
GOING FOR GOLD
We are running our race
With the goal in our sight
We’re mighty and strong
Serving God, day and night
We are aiming real high
We are making a goal
With our eye on the prize
We are GOING FOR GOLD!
I hope that you know God’s dreams for you are Olympic size! He has a good plan for your life, to give you a future and a hope. Are you preparing for greatness? It is important not only to be strong on the outside, but to be even stronger inside, knowing that God’s power is working in you! Make it your goal, to GO FOR GOLD fro God!
Have you ever heard anyone say, don’t set your expectations too high, because you’ll be disappointed? I’ve heard that said before and that statement makes me sad. I love making big goals, and having high aspirations. I want to aim high and go for excellence in life. You’ve probably also heard it said, if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time. I think we as Christians need to set a high standard in the world. Not only should we have integrity, character and good manners, I think we should be a cut above at our jobs, in industry, and in the marketplace. We have the God of the universe living within us, and we sometimes settle for so much less than God’s best for us. One statement I hate hearing is….”it’s good enough”, or “it’ll do.” To me those statements mean we’re not going to do any more than we absolutely have to do. We want to just get by. Our standards should be much better than that! I also hate to hear anyone justify their actions by saying, “Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I?” Our standard becomes what others are doing, not what God’s Word tells us to do, or God’s standard of excellence and righteousness. I want to encourage you to have high aspirations…dream big, believe big, achieve big, for our Great Big GOD.
This week we are talking about being spiritually and physically fit. As Christians, we need to prepare and compete like an athlete, just like an Olympian would. You might be thinking that you are not an athelete, so this doesn’t apply to you. Guess what I Tim 4:7 says? We are supposed to exercise ourself to godliness! Athletes exercise, so you are a spiritual athlete! It’s time to get fit! We can strive for mastery over our bodies, by putting them under, and we can be winners in life! It is time to flex our spiritual muscles, and become stronger when adversity comes your way. Refuse to be a complainer. Refuse to be a whiner. Fast negativity of all kinds! Remove words from your vocabulary that bring you to a negative place. Fill up on good stuff so that there is no room for bad stuff. Choose to build and lift. Any words that destroy, steal or damage do not allow to come out of your mouth. Soldiers exercise hard, and are in training. I’ve never been to boot camp, but talk about being stretched….it is all about finding the tough ones who will endure hardship like a good soldier. When things get hard, it is time to flex your spiritual muscles and use your faith to see circumstances change. You can say this with me, All things are possible, God’s grace is sufficient for me, I am well able, It will be worth it, God will supply all of my needs, God will never leave me, I am more than a conqueror. I am becoming physically fit, and spiritually fit to win in life!
One of the cutest things I’ve ever seen is a little tiny girl, under 1 year of age, with her physical eye on a ball. Her daddy said, “Sweetheart, put your eye on the ball,” and she did just that. Can we take the Word of God that literally? God does want us to keep our eye focused on Him. We are to keep Him in our sights all the time. We have this tendency to get distracted by the things of this world, and the cares of this world, but we are to have a single eye. We are to be single minded, or single focused. Let’s stay in focus. I got glasses as a 13 year old, and was just amazed that you could see leaves on trees, and that details of things far away could be clearly in focus. Before I knew any better, I thought everyone saw like my eyes were used to seeing. But get the lens you need in front of your eye, and whala….you see things in a very different light. What can be blurring your focus? Is there something that is distracting you, or making it hard for you to see clearly? Are there perceptions or belief systems that shade or skew your view? Are there confusing points of view that are trying to pry you from the truth that you know? Let’s keep our eye clearly focused, and then let’s keep our eye on the prize. We don’t want to miss out on a reward because we never made it to the finish line. Let’s make it to the finish line, without distractions, keeping our eye on the ball.
We have all heard the statement, that there is no “I” in team. The very word “team” means that there is more than one person working together. There is great power in teamwork. Once we’re born again, we have joined a great team, the family of God, and it is very cool that we have great benefits for our lifetime because we are on a God’s team. We’ll be talking this week about being spiritually and physically fit. Both are very important because we are on a team, and just like a runner in an Olympic relay medley, we don’t want to be the one teammate that holds everyone back, that tires out, or drops the baton. It’s no fun being the weakest link. Our desire to be strong. God wants us to be spiritually fit because we have a race to run, and he wants us to obtain the prize at the finish line. We want to be physically fit, because we want to live productively until we make it to the finish line! So let’s be fit for life. How do we do that? There are so many different opinions, and each expert gives different advice. I know one thing that simplifies everything. For food choices, eat food that God made as close to how God made them….fruits, vegetables, grains, meat that is as close to nature as possible. For exercise, the best advice I’ve ever heard is to move more. A good mantra is move more, eat less. If we consume less calories than we burn, do the math, the weight will come off. I know there can be extenuating circumstances, but let’s get fit, spiritually and physically. Then let’s stay, fit for life! It’s possible and I know we can do it!
Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with an encouraging word for your day. As summer time keeps rolling along, and the Summer Olympics have just ended, I thought it would be good to focus on getting in shape! We are so proud of Will Brown an AGF member who place 12th and 10th in his Olympic shooting events. Way to go Will! Being an Olympian takes discipline and getting fit does too. I know it sounds like hard work, but if we want to be strong and fit and live a long healthy life, we need to get in shape. If we want to run the race well for God, we need to be in shape spiritually too. Let’s do both! Here is your dailyeword.
I can hear you breathing a sigh of relief. Whew! You’re thinking, spiritually in shape – I can do that! We definitely need to be strong from the inside out. But, I do think both are important. We need to be in shape spiritually. We should know what we believe, why we believe it, and be people who put our faith into action and are doers of the Word. At the same time, we do need to be in shape physically, because if we want to fulfill our purpose on this earth, we need to be healthy enough for our physical heart to keep on ticking.
I know most of you would probably be appalled if one of our pastors stood up in the pulpit with a cigarette in his mouth, puffing away. What is surprising is that we don’t even give it a second thought if he would be 100 pounds overweight and preaching in the pulpit. We think smoking is way worse for us. What is interesting is that just recently, the largest percentage of deaths in America changed from being a result of smoking, to being a result of heart disease, often a symptom of being overweight. YIKES!!!! There are more diseases that are a result of overeating than any other indicator. We as a population are just way too fat and lazy. Lest you think I am casting stones, I know the pain of being overweight. It is easy to go to food for comfort, or to ease stress, or even to cover up for pain. Because of our busy lifestyles, we often choose convenience food over healthy food. We should be choosing health over convenience. I’ve done it, and I’m sure you have too. If we want to run our race, and make it to the finish line, not only do we have to be faithful to God in our spiritual life, we need to be faithful to God in our physical life. Let’s set aside those weights that so easily beset us, and run the race, and make it to the finish line, healthy and strong. We can get to heaven sick, but we don’t have to. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to put the words old and sick together. Let’s contend for health to our dying day. Let’s be old, wise, experienced, and healthy, making the most of every day, so that we can live long on the earth and fulfill our personal assignment here on earth, doing what God has purposed for us to accomplish.
Today as we close the week, we are going to talk about patience with our words. Because we know the power that words can have, when we demonstrate impatience often the result is angry words. One very common place to see frustration boil into anger is in the home. Families raise their voices in anger, and soon chaos, confusion and division results. Another place that I’ve seen frustration boil into anger is in airports. Having traveled often by air, I have watched people lash out and curse at airline attendants for things that they have no control over, like the weather or a mechanical delay. I am always amazed that those who are reacting in anger don’t consider how they are viewed by other people who also have to wait. We all understand that there are inconveniences that happen. The very thing that can be a big blessing and a time saver, flying to your destination, becomes a nuisance. The same thing happens with cell phones. As much of a blessing and a convenience they can be, when they don’t work as designed, people loose patience and get angry. As a reminder as we close this topic, I want you to think about situations or people who make you impatient. As a bit of homework, every time you feel inconvenienced by them or it, make a special effort to be extra patient in return. Not only are you sowing good seed, you are using your words and actions to prove that the love of God is in you and is coming out of you by your actions, and in this specific instance through patience. God is at work in you. You are changing from the inside out, and there is evidence that God’s love is flowing through you by the patience you live out.
We talked a little about hurry yesterday, and how it can be the enemy of patience. John Wooten who was a basketball coach at UCLA had a saying that many of his players remember well. He would say, be quick, but don’t hurry. Often it is very important to act quickly, but to be hasty can be wasted energy. We have probably all learned that haste makes waste. That was probably one of my dad’s favorite saying. Slow and steady wins the race. Be methodical, and exercise patience with everyone. Having patience can increase the pleasure we have in our relationships. Kids spell love TIME, but adults do too. When we take time for the relationships we have in our life, we are really saying I love you enough to take the time necessary to value you. When we exercise patience in tough situations we will reap the benefits of in the long run. Bailing out, pressuring up, and walking out mad is all too common in our world. It we want to let patience have her perfect work, it means work, and work takes time, a lot of the time. Make a choice to be patient can be one of the most efficient choices we make.” If we think hurrying around makes us more efficient, we are wrong! So how can you react in situations when you are tempted to make a hasty decision, or hastily respond? We can choose patience. Why not make the choice today, to let patience have her perfect work in you, and become a person who is known for patience, or perhaps better said, a person who is known for letting God’s love operate in you by being a patient person!
When we are patient, we are acknowledging that people and relationship are more important than schedules and our daily planner. Very often interruptions in our day, can be God interruptions. Just recently, I was hurrying into a store to get something that needed to be delivered within the hour, and I ran into 2 separate people who definitely were God appointments. Those are divine moments when you know it was on purpose that you had the opportunity to encourage somebody. They weren’t on my schedule, and I hadn’t put them in my daily planner, but wow, I’m so glad I didn’t pass up those God moments. It did make someone who was waiting on me have to be patient, and thankfully, they were. Maybe you’ve heard this said. Hurry isn’t of the devil, it is the devil! I think you understand the sentiment. When we plan our days so tightly, or when our life is in chaos because we are running around harried all the time, we can be making everyone else have to be patient with us! Let’s be realistic about how much we can accomplish – I just looked through my to do list for today, and I may be preaching to me! Usually when we do practice patience, our productivity increases! Sometimes when productivity decreases in an employee, they may be going through something in their personal life that is overwhelming. Instead of just letting them go, it may be better to practice patience and find out what is going on in their world. One of the most dramatic illustration of not knowing what is happening in someone’s life was told in this story. A man was on the subway with his 3 children on a Sunday afternoon, and his children were unruly and he was doing nothing about it. A woman sitting near them scolded him for not controlling his children. He gently and patiently commented back to her that they just left the hospital where his wife had passed away. Thud moment. You never know what people are going through. Let’s be the ones who show love and patience to each person we meet.