Run to Win: Living a Transformed Life

By a show of hands, how many of you watched the Olympics? Any of you watch gymnastics? Now you guys don’t know this because you don’t know me that well, but I used to teach gymnastics. When I was a pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma I also coached competitive gymnastics and a few of my former gymnasts have competed in college and been on the National Team. So there’s this connection I have with sports and faith. Being a pastor and being a coach is not really a whole lot different. Reverend Doctor Coach Josh. It’s got a good ring to it. And because of that, I see how sports are often a good analogy for the way in which we live out our faith.

The Apostle Paul agrees with me. When he writes to the city of Corinth, a city which hosted a precursor to the Olympics called the Isthmian Games, he compared living the Christian life to running a race: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” He goes on to talk about how those runners who sign up to run go into strict training. They discipline, they disciple their bodies and place themselves in a position to win the prize. “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.”

Paul is saying that the Christian life is hard work. The Christian life requires training. The Christian life requires discipleship. The Christian life requires time and effort. It requires focused purpose. Paul is saying to the people of Corinth that believing in Jesus and becoming part of God’s kingdom community is like signing up to run a race. Becoming a Christian isn’t the end of the journey; it’s the beginning.

The goal of the Christian life is not to get to heaven. If it was, then when the pastor baptizes you, they’d just hold you under until the bubbles stopped. Is to be transformed into something and someone new in this life. In the here and now. That’s what we were talking about last week. The witness of the church is a transformed life. And while that transformation inwardly happens instantly when you accept Jesus as Savior, the outside takes a lot longer to work on. Some of you know this. All of you know this. Paul knows this. He says to the Romans and he’s talking about his own struggle with sin: “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Paul portrays this as a fight against sin, a fight against his own body and mind: “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” It’s a trap that Paul can’t get out of, unless, he finishes: “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

That struggle against sin is something theologians called sanctification. There are three stages to salvation, okay? There’s justification, that’s Jesus taking your sin on the cross, where it becomes just-as-if-I’d never sinned. That’s signing up for the race. Then there’s sanctification. And that is the work of discipleship where you never become sinless, but you begin to sin less as you run the race of faith and grow closer to God. Then, there’s glorification. That’s ultimate salvation. That’s death to this life and new life in heaven—where Paul says “I have fought the fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Justification happened on the cross. Glorification happens at death. We aren’t involved in either of them. But sanctification—that’s the running of the race—that we have a part in. But here’s the problem. All too often, we’re content with just having signed up. A couple years ago, the Barna group did a study that assessed the Christlikeness of Christians. Now I’d have to talk for about an hour just to tell you all the ins and outs of this study, but to summarize they asked a sample of Christians to respond on a four-point scale to twenty different questions. 10 statements they believed reflected Jesus. 10 they believed represented a self-righteous attitude.

They then created a score for each person and put them in one of four quadrants: Christlike in action and attitude, Christlike in action but not attitude, Christlike in attitude but not action, and Christlike in neither. Only 14% of self-identified Christians—just one out of every seven Christians—seem to represent the actions and attitudes Barna researchers found to be consistent with those of Jesus. Fourteen percent. We have failed to be transformative. We’re not running like we want to win the race.

Let me show you a video. This is Simone Biles at the 2023 World Championships. Watch this routine. There’s power and grace and precision. She wants to win. Hours upon hours of training have gone into this 60 second routine. There’s the dismount and world champion.

Okay, now it’s my turn. I’ve got my makeshift beam here. This is how we—myself included—can approach the Christian faith. We start out good. We’re excited to be here. We’re excited to be participating. We learn a few basic moves that everyone learns. But then, stuff happens. You know what stuff. Life hits hard and fast and it’s no longer very fun to be up on the balance beam. What if I stumble? What if I look a bit silly? Better to be safe. Better to just maybe lie here until I die. Just come to church, sit in the pew, and do that most Sundays.

You live your life as a Christian. You believe in Jesus. But you never really do anything about it. It never really affects the way you handle your finances, your job, your free time, or the way you live. And then, you die. You dismount. What kind of routine is that? And now you have to stand before the one whom Scripture calls the judge of all the earth and this is what you have? We can’t all be Simone Biles, but come on. Notice that Paul doesn’t say “You get salvation if you win the race” but “run as if you want to win the race.” God’s not as interested in the end product as he is the process. And the Holy Spirit inside of you, she guides and directs that process. Run in such a way as to win the race.

But the reason I think people don’t run the race is because they’re scared, they’re unsure, they’re beat down by life. They honestly, genuinely want to run the race. They want to perform a good routine. All of you here, I believe you’re here because you want to have a closer relationship with Jesus, you want to be more like Christ. So why do so many of us miss that mark? Why do we become paralyzed and give up and just lay down and wait to die?

It’s because we’ve been told we have to be perfect. We’re scared of doing the wrong thing. We’re scared of failing. We’re scared of looking bad. We’re worried that the routine that we’re doing is a different routine than what the judge wants. I mean, we are standing before the judge of all the earth. How do we know we’re getting it right? How do we know that what we are doing is God’s will?

That’s a big question. What is God’s will for my life? That is not a one size fits all question. The Christian life looks different for different people. In gymnastics, everybody does a different routine. I promise not to nerd out too much on you, but in gymnastics there is a document called the Code of Points. Think of it like the gymnastics Bible. It has all the parameters for the sport. It has a list of every single gymnastics skill and divides them into different categories with different values.

Now, as a coach and a gymnast, when you make a routine, you’re looking for your ten best skills that fulfill all the criteria in the Code of Points. So on the balance beam, you have to do a leap type of skill, you have to do a spin, you have to do some tumbling, and you have to do a skill to get on the beam and a skill to get off of it. But what skills those are and in what order you do them are pretty much up to you and your coach. So each gymnast crafts their routine in a way that makes the most sense for who they are and what they are good at. The Code of Points gives them a loose standard, a skeletal structure, that provides a way of being—but then each gymnast is allowed to create a routine within that that allows them to flourish.

God’s will is like that. God doesn’t micromanage. He doesn’t demand that all his children do exactly the same thing, live exactly the same life. God’s will is not so regimented. We get so scared about doing it wrong that we never do anything at all. Or we’re afraid that because a decision seems too simple or easy or it’s what we want to do that it can’t be God’s will. Because there’s some preachers that will try to tell you that following God means giving up everything you want and that is not true.

God’s will has parameters, yes, but within those parameters, there is an abundance of opportunity for freedom and flourishing. In Colossians, Paul is writing this very theological letter. It’s one of his most complex in terms of theological arguments, it’s one of his highest-minded epistles in terms of its academic terminology and thinking. A lot of profound principles about who Christ is. And when Paul begins to bring those concepts to a practical conclusion, he says this:

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Here we are, so much agony, so much deliberation, about what God’s will is. And here comes Paul, in a letter about how Christ is the head over everything, who not just controls our life but he says “Christ, who is your life” in Colossians 3:4, when you run the race to win, when you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, when you’re out there honestly and fervently doing your best before the judge of all the earth, then the will of God for you is whatever.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Because when I know God’s ways, he will lead me into his will. When I am in training, when I am in discipleship, when I am genuinely seeking the will of God, God will make it known. God’s will is not meant to be a mystery. God isn’t keeping it from us. God wants us to know his will. He wants us to live it out. He wants us to go out with all daring and abandon live this life to its absolute fullest.

But we still have the question. How do I know this—whatever this is, who should I marry, what job should I take, where should I live, how many kids should we have, any question of life that causes us concern—how do I know what is God’s will? In the book of Acts, we see a little bit about how God works. Acts 16 gives us some insight.

Paul is starting his second missionary journey and he has a plan to go back through all the same cities he had the first time and visit the churches he had planted then. They are going south and they’re going east. From Jerusalem east toward southwest Asia and India.

Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

They’re going. They’re stopped. They’re going, they’re stopped. And then God gives them supernatural direction. And just like that, the gospel starts heading toward Rome in a way that would totally change Europe for the next 2000 years.

But Paul did not wait on God to tell him exactly where to go. He knew God’s will—that people know the Gospel—so he set out to preach and then God defined and refined that calling for him. Paul didn’t sit around waiting on God to give him a map of exactly where to go or a script of exactly what to say. He gave Paul a general calling—preach the Gospel—and it was on Paul to take the initiative.

God’s will is not stop until I say go. It’s go until I say stop. Too often, we wait around on the will of God to be known, when all God wants us to do is go. Be obedient. Be faithful. Then God will show you the specifics. Paul knew God’s ways—he knew that he was called as an evangelist to spread the Gospel. Then God modified his plans by giving it specificity and direction.

There is so much freedom here. We avoid the paralysis of analysis and can simply take a deep breath and trust God to guide us. Do you know how much God wants his will to be accomplished in your life? God put his Spirit inside of us to help guide us into his will.

The more I become like Christ, the more Christlike my decisions become. Not just in the moral sphere, but in everything that I want to do. The closer my relationship with Jesus, the more I will naturally want the things he wants. My gut instinct isn’t my gut, it’s the Holy Spirit within me. I naturally begin to want the same things that God wants. And so I can trust God. I don’t have to be afraid that I’ve somehow transgressed them or sinned against them by not agonizing over every small thing.

The will of God, it turns out, is not a balance beam. It’s not a delicate balance where every step matters and every wobble could spell doom. God’s will is a dance floor where you have full rein and creative expression to live within the boundaries of the dance. And if you falter, if you fall, the judge, well he’s still a judge but he’s a coach as well and he’s right there to pick you back up and tell you to keep on going. Because the truth is, for all the sports analogies, it’s not a competition. It’s not even a performance. It’s not about being the best. It’s about being faithful and living transformed lives that show the power of the Holy Spirit in us.

Let’s pray: King of kings, Lord of lords, Judge of all the earth—thank you for your mercy and grace. Thank you for your spirit to guide us, for your word to direct us, for your people to go with us and cheer us on. As we run this race, we fix our eyes on you the author and perfecter of our faith. Give us the supernatural strength to be a transforming presence to all those we come across. Help us live in the light of your love. Amen.