Good afternoon. I don’t think it’s too early to say, Happy Thanksgiving to each other. It’s a good, good, good time of the year. I made a mistake getting ready for this weekend. On Wednesday, I decided that I would swim outside. I actually have a swimming teacher. It would be too much to say that it’s a coach or a trainer because I’m trying to learn how to swim. She said, “Well, let’s do intervals.” Then she says, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t, because you know the air quality.” I say, “Ah, it’ll be fine.” Since Wednesday, it’s been tough. 

It’s great to be here this weekend, especially great to be here while Pastor Terry and the team are coming back from Israel. I can’t wait to hear the stories that he and the team are going to share. I’m sure that as we go into the holidays, we’ll learn a lot from their travels. We’ve been at this sustained thing for a while now. Remember, we started with a spark, went to step, and now we’re coming to the end of sustain. In fact, Pastor Lewis is going to end that series for us next week.

A few weeks ago, we had another member of our church, Alex Costanzo share. Did anybody get a chance to see Alex share? It was amazing. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, go on Cornerstone TV. Let me just encourage you. If you’re looking for something to binge on, Cornerstone TV is a good binge watch; because there are these amazing messages. The reason the church does this for all of us is that we’re not always in town. We miss things, and things come up; so we have a chance to go back and revisit.

I would encourage you to go back and listen to her message. She talked about how to build endurance; how to finish the race. She talked about her own life marathon story, which is an amazing one. Like Alex, I’ve run the marathon distance; I’ve got eight of them underneath my belt. I hope I get two more. I only have two things that are holding me back: this one and this one (pointing at his legs). Neither one of them wants to cooperate, to try to get me through those next two marathons, but I’m working on it.

I love the marathon. It’s marathon season. In fact, the marathon season starts in the fall, when it starts to cool down. It continues on into the spring before it gets warm and too hot. There’s only one major marathon in America that’s run in the middle of the summer. Do you know which one that one is? That would be the San Francisco Marathon. We run it in July. People come from all over the world because it’s nice, cool, cloudy, damp. But otherwise, they are run in the spring and the fall.

In fact, two weeks ago, the New York City Marathon was run. There’s a picture of the two winners. The male winner was Lelisa Desisa. He ran it in two hours, five minutes, and 59 seconds. Mary Kitani had her fourth win. She ran in two hours, 22 minutes, and 48 seconds. Now that’s really fast. The fastest, official world record marathon was run just recently, in September, by Eliod Cachogi in Berlin. He ran the marathon in two hours, one minute and 39 seconds. We’re close to the two-hour mark now. No one in history has ever broken it, but it’s been tried. In fact, last year, Nike did an experiment. They created what they called the Sub-Two-Hour Project. Nike took Mr. Cachogi, who set the World Record, and the gentleman runner we just saw from the New York City Marathon. They created a special environment for them using a Formula One track in Italy. Nike gave them special shoes called the Nike Zoom Vapor Fly 4%. That 4% was 4% more efficient than any other shoe. The perfect weather was found and a three-day window, where the humidity would be right, was used. They ran at night with no wind. Everything was perfect. Special food and drink were given to the runners.

The coolest thing was the pace car. It stayed in front of them the entire 26.2 miles. The car projected and the pace and a lot of their biometrics. The runners had to focus on it. They could see their heartbeat, blood pressure, and pacing, how many times our legs were turning. It was the pace car of all pace cars. Guess what the result was? Two hours and 25 seconds. That’s close. It was called The Race of All Races. It’s been called the Run of All Runs. But it’s neither of those.

In fact, the Race of All Races, and the Run of All Runs is found right here in our handout. If you look at our handout and look at our scripture today, 1 Corinthians 9:24-25. It tells us, “Don’t you realize that in a race, everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win. All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.” The race, the run that we’re talking about here, was actually written by the apostle Paul. We’ve studied Paul during the sustaining period. Pastor Terry and Pastor Lewis have talked about Paul in his missionary travels.

Paul was probably the most prolific writer of the entire New Testament. They say that the best writers write of the things they know and experience. Remember, Paul was not always Paul. He was Saul prior and would’ve been familiar with a lot of people who took care of themselves, like the Roman guard. The Roman guard; those guys took care of themselves. They were like the Marines. They were constantly working out. How do they get in their best shape? They run. Likely, Paul knew of the Roman guard running.

Paul was writing to a group of people in Corinth, the Corinthians, which was a principal city in Greece. It was actually on an isthmus, which is land that connects to other land. They had these games that they called the Isthmus Games. They were like the Olympics; a very competitive, fit type of culture. In fact, Corinth was wealthy with a lot of arts and culture. It had a lot of sports. It sounds like the Bay area. Things that we would be used to and understand. We probably understand running races because they happen in San Francisco, it seems, all the time; especially right now. They canceled them all because of the air quality. We’re used to these things. The Corinthians would have been used to the metaphor that Paul was using; it would have made sense to them. If we dig into the verses start with “Don’t you realize in a race, everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize?” What he was referencing is, “You know these races. You know these runs. You’ve seen them. You know that kind of thing. All kinds of people run in these races, but only one wins the prize.”

Pual quickly shifts. That’s not what we’re talking about; we’re talking about something else. He says, “So run to win.” Paul is talking about a different kind of race, a different kind of run. The older verses say, “To get the prize.” Or, “To obtain the prize.” I like the word obtain because obtain is not just about what, it’s also about how. What do we have to do to obtain something? It encompasses way more than just the result. Maybe that’s what Paul was trying to get to. Paul goes on to say, “All athletes are disciplined in their training.” Disciplined in their training. We could stop right here, and spend an entire message on what it means to be disciplined in the kind of race or run that Paul is talking about. I want to go deep into one part of it.

We know pro athletes, elite athletes, care and are extraordinarily disciplined about what they put into their bodies. How they fuel themselves is very important. There has been book after book written on how to eat to win, how to drink to win, how to eat to live, and how to drink to live. What Paul was trying to say is, “I’m setting up this race for you. This run is a metaphor. You’re to be disciplined, but you’ve got to fuel yourselves as a part of that discipline if you want to run this race, if you want to be in this run at the best level that you can be at.” I want to explore four areas where we can fuel ourselves for this race, for this long run.

The first is to be led by God, we must follow Him. You can’t be led if you don’t follow. You’ve got to be willing to give up, in order to be led. Ultimately, you have to give up and follow. That’s what God is asking us to do. No offense to anybody who works in social media, who believes you created the term “follow.” Somebody out there is going to claim it. I tried to do a bunch of research to say, “Did it go all the way back to Six Degrees of Separation? Or was it Friendster? It wasn’t MySpace. It might’ve been Twitter; probably it was Twitter.” But all of a sudden, this term “follow” becomes a part of our vernacular. Guess what? God has been asking us to follow Him from the beginning of time. He’s the author, He’s the creator of the great social network, because we are the social network. We are all users of social networks. God puts out a big follow button for us. Do you know what? God’s so good at that, He posts to us daily in God’s Word, in our prayer, fellowship time, and when we come here. He’s just posting to us and saying, “Hey, take this in. Do you know what I want you to do? I want you to share it.” Do you know what a share button is? It’s us. We’re His share button. He wants us to be out there sharing everything because we follow Him.

There are certain people and things that I follow on social media. I really follow it. I read everything they post, everything. I share them like crazy. But do I do the same for God? Do I follow Him in a way that I am in His word every day? Am I seeking more and more of the knowledge that He gives us in the lessons He gives? Am I sharing Him like crazy? Don’t go home and follow Jesus or God on Facebook. It’s there. That’s not what we’re talking about. I’m talking about the bigger following. I’m talking about fixing our eyes on Jesus, on God, and falling in behind Him, like that pace car. Remember the pace car? Constantly giving them updates, setting the pace for them. Cachogi finished that race in two hours and 25 seconds. The pace car went across the line in one hour and 59 minutes. The pace car didn’t slow down, it kept pulling.

Jesus wants us to look at Him. He wants us to fix our eyes on Him, to truly follow Him. He says in Hebrews 12:2, “Fix your eyes on Jesus, whom our faith depends on from the start of the race, to the finish of the race.” He will pace us to our greatest potential in this abundant life that He wants us to live.

The second fueling point is God wants us to utilize Him. He wants us to utilize Him. There are 5,467 promises by God in the Bible. That’s a lot of promises. I will tell you this, neither Google, Siri, or Alexa knows that fact. I asked them. I had to dig deeper. So the machine’s not ready to take over. So don’t be freaked out yet. It may someday, but it hasn’t yet. It hasn’t figured everything out. 5,467 promises in the Bible that He wants us to unlock. Why wouldn’t He want us to have all of those promises if He gave them to us? Promises that were made in the past to others. Promises we can reflect on and bring into our own life. Promises that we will get in the future if we continue to follow Him.

I happen to be a co-host of a podcast called the Faith-Driven Entrepreneur. A few weeks ago, we had a guest on. We were talking about this idea of following, being engaged, and utilizing God. He said, “You know, there are seven words that can unlock everything that God wants us to have.” Of course, I immediately said, “Really? Seven words? It’s that easy? What are they?” He said,” help me, Jesus. I’m sorry, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” Six words: help me, I’m sorry, thank you; one word makes the seventh, Jesus. God wants us to utilize Him to unlock those promises. How do we do that? We do that by “help me, I’m sorry, and thank you, Jesus.” That way we can be with Him, utilizing Him all the time. He wants us to utilize Him in all of the places of our lives. He wants us to call in our families and relationships. Thursday we’re going to have Thanksgiving dinners with family. We might be wise to go into that with, “Help me, Jesus.” Then when we say the things that we wish we hadn’t said, “I’m sorry, Jesus.” When we come out of it, everyone is good for another year, “Thank you, Jesus.” It works. In our finances, help me. I’m sorry. Thank you. In our work. We’re going to go back to work tomorrow. Some of us will get Thursday, and maybe some of us will get Friday off, but we’re going to be on the job tomorrow, and all day long. If we would use these seven words, we could call on God, because we need it. We need it when we walk in.

In the Old Testament, when Nehemiah built the wall, he was going to ask the king for the supplies and time to do it, he stopped for a second. It’s called the Nehemiah Prayer. He says, “Help me, Lord. Help me God, before I go see the king.” Before we go to any meeting, can we not say, “Help me?” If we say the wrong things, or a bad word comes out of our mouth, or we don’t treat somebody well, we can say, “Help me.” We can say, “I’m sorry.” We can also say, “Thank you, Jesus, for forgiving me for all of those things.” So God wants us to utilize Him.

Third, He wants to fuel us by engaging with Him. He wants us to do that continuously, not just with the seven words, but to daily engage with Him. To engage means to occupy, attract, involve someone’s interest or attention, or to participate and get involved. That’s what engagement means. I’ll tell you the two things that demonstrate engagement. One is how we spend our time. The second one is how we spend our money. I’ve always said, you’ve probably heard me say it before when I speak, you give me two pieces of your information, and in 30 minutes, I can tell you what’s important to you. You give me your calendar and credit card bills for the last 30 days and I’ll tell you what’s important to you. Where you put your time and money is what we engage in.

Those aren’t bad things. We can engage in lots of activities, and we have lots of passions. I like sports. I love sports. I went to Purdue; I’m engaged with Purdue. I know that this afternoon at 5:30 on ESPN2, Purdue is playing Virginia Tech in the finals of the Charleston Classic. I will be in front of the television at 5:30 this afternoon. I’m excited about that. I’m engaged. Am I that engaged with God? Am I that engaged with what He wants to deliver in my life? I put a verse in the handout. You know this one; Matthew 6:11. You know where that comes from, right? “Give us this day our daily bread.” It’s the Lord’s prayer, Jesus modeled that for us. He didn’t say, “Give us this day, our weekly bread, or our monthly bread, or our annual supply of bread.” He said, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He wants us to come back and engage with Him, day after day after day. If not continuously, daily.

I grew up a bit of a comic book nerd. Stan Lee died and I was preparing the message and doing things, and I thought about Stanley. I thought about all of his comic book characters. It reminded me of not one that he created because he was Marvel Comics. The rivals were DC Comics. There was this DC Comic called Green Lantern. They made a movie about it in 2011. It didn’t go very far. Green Lantern had this ring that gave him superpowers. What he had to do was, he and the ring had to go in the lantern in order to recharge the ring. Guess when he was supposed to do it? Every day. So he could have the power to go out and do what he needed to do.

That’s what God is telling us. He says, “I want to fuel you. I need you to be in my word. I need you to be in fellowship. I need you to be in prayer daily so that I can fuel you for the race, and the run that you’re in.” Anybody ever heard of intermittent fasting? It’s a fad right now. Do you want to lose weight? Here’s the deal. Don’t eat before noon. From noon to eight o’clock, eat everything you’re going to eat. Stop eating at eight o’clock, and starve yourself until the next morning. It works, I guess, to lose weight. If you’re competing, you don’t do that. When you’re in the game, the race, or in the run, you’re not intermittently fasting, you’re constantly eating. You’re constantly drinking little bits to keep you fueled. That’s what God is asking us to do. I’m going to give you a little engagement tip that I picked up this year. You don’t think you can continue to learn? I’m an old guy; I’m still learning. So I listened to a message. I’m a Bible reader. I love reading the Bible and have since I was a kid. In the even years, I try to read the Bible all the way through from the beginning to the end. I don’t do it every year. I’ll finish this year because it’s an even year.

This year I’m reading it differently because I heard a message given by a pastor who said, “Before you sit down into God’s Word and engage with Him, tell Him what you’re looking for. He wants to hear that. When you do that, He will reveal to you what you need.” Now what I do before I sit down in the morning, is sit down and say, “God, I need a hug today. Just give me a hug. I need to feel love.” Some days I sit down, and I say, “God, I’ve got doubts. Can you show me that I’m not supposed to have those doubts?” There are days I’m like a lot of other people, where I say, “God, I’m just lonely. I don’t want to be lonely.” There are days when I’m frustrated. There are days when I’m stuck. I’m just stuck. “God, I am stuck. I don’t know which way to turn, left or right? Will you reveal that to me?”

In today’s world, I hate to say it. There are days I’m angry. If I look at Twitter before I read my Bible, sometimes I end up angrier than I want to be. I flipped that now. But there are days where I’m just angry, and I say, “God, help me take care of this anger.” Do you know what? He delivers every single time. Not on the first verse. Maybe not in the second, maybe not in the first five minutes, but somewhere if you stick long enough, and engage with Him, He will deliver.

Our fourth and last fueling point is we have to live it out, daily, for Him. I love that part of our mission statement of Cornerstone is to live it out. Remember, we’re the share button. We’re supposed to be the ones out there living it out. There’s an old adage; “Those who teach, learn twice. Those who teach learn twice.” That’s why I love teaching in the Children’s Ministry, to take really tough lessons for us who are older, mature, and have been around the block. We should be able to get it, and we’re still struggling. Give that to a first through sixth-grader, in a way that they can take it home, sit in the car, go to school the next day, and it stays in their heart and mind. They can live it out. Every time I teach up there, I learn twice. I walk away and think, “Why didn’t I see it that way the first time?”

Each time we live things out, God has given us gifts. When we live those things out, we’re getting refueled. He’s giving that to us. When we love our neighbors, we’re getting refueled. When we show grace, mercy, and forgiveness, we’re getting refueled. When we encourage others. Let me just tell you, there are so many people right now who need encouragement. They’re all around us. They’re in our families, neighborhoods, and at work with us; they just need somebody to pat them on the back. God says to us, “Be encouragers.” If we do that, we get refueled.

Pastor Terry’s out of town, so I’m just going to say this. He’s probably already watched on the live stream from last time. I kept my phone off, so he can’t text me yet. You don’t have to be a pastor to live it out. You don’t have to stand up here and speak. You don’t have to write a blog. Just live it out wherever you are, in all the different places. We can get refueled. Why do I know that? Because in John 4:34, Jesus said to His disciples, “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, and from finishing His work. My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, and from finishing His work.” If God nourished Jesus that way, then that’s what He’s doing with us. When we live it out, we’re getting refueled.

Let’s go back to our scripture for just a second. He says, “All athletes are disciplined in their training, and we’re to be disciplined.” Why don’t we do this? Why do we focus on all these disciplines? Why are we denying ourselves? Why are we trying to fuel ourselves? Why can’t we just go through life and take in the empty calories, the sugar highs, or do the four-minute workout? It’s all there for us. We can get through life. It’s because Paul said, “If we’re doing that, we’re running the wrong race. We’re running a race, not for a prize or a metal.” I’ve run a lot of races. I got a drawer full of metals. I keep them. Patty and I have no children. When I die, where do you think they’re going to go? I don’t think anybody’s coming up and saying, “Hey, can I have Rusty’s running metals? How cool would that be, for me to hang onto those and collect those?” No, they’re going in the dumpster. 

Jesus said to us, “Don’t store these things that can be eaten by moths or rust away. Store your things and treasures into heaven.” That’s what Paul is telling us. He’s saying, “Don’t think about the earthly race. Think about the one, fuel yourselves for the eternal prize, a prize that we can all obtain.”

I put a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson in our handout. He doesn’t have it all right I don’t think, but it applies. It says, “What lies behind us…” That history. “And what lies before us..” The future. “Are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” Our future does matter. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be an eternal prize that we’re working towards. But he’s right, that our future is shaped and determined by what lies within us.

Here’s the challenge God’s giving us today. For some of us, we see the start line. We’re thinking about stepping up to it. We think we’ve seen others that have been in the race. We think we want to do it, but we haven’t walked to the starting line yet. I’m going to tell you, you should. I’m going to tell you it’s worth it. There’s an eternal prize for that. It is not easy; the run, the race that we’re given. We have to fuel ourselves. We have to work hard. We have to be disciplined. But it is worth it. If you are at that moment, cross the starting line; follow God, follow Jesus.

For others of us, we’re in the race. Sometimes we walk, sometimes we trod along. We might be feeling stirred to pick up the pace a little bit. That is the time that we’re supposed to kick it in right now. But we could also get caught in the trap. This is what’s going to happen in January when we all have our New Year’s resolutions. We’re going to say, “I’ll start going to the gym when I lose some weight.” We’ve all said it. “I’ll start working out when I lose some weight, but I have to start working out to lose the weight. But if I don’t lose the weight, I can’t start working out.” We get caught. We get trapped.

Maybe what God’s telling us is, “You know what? Strip that weight. Just get going. Just pick up the pace.” We’re all human. We’re invited to join the race, to pick up the pace. We get invitations. We have situations. What God is saying to us is, “I’m inviting you. Come on. Follow the pace car, follow the pace car. I got you.” There are those of us who are trying to run this race. We were running hard. We are following, utilizing, engaging, and living it out. What I say to you is, “Keep it up. Keep it up. It’s going to be worth it. It’s going to be worth it.”

If you’ve not ever run in a race, you’ve seen a race. We’ve seen them all around us. We know that when you’re running, people hold up signs. It’s kind of one of those cool things. If you have a bib that’s got your name on it, people you don’t know yell your name out. Those signs say things like, “dig deeper,” “go faster.” Let’s just imagine for a moment that we’re in this race. God, His angels, and witnesses are watching. God tells us in Hebrews that, “There’s a cloud of witnesses around us as we run.” They’re holding up signs. They are saying, “Dig deeper.” They are saying, “Give it your all.” They are saying, “You’re almost there.” Or, “The finish is worth it.” I see signs and hear, “Go, daughter, go.” Or, “Go, son, go.” If I listen closely, I hear God saying, “Rusty, you got this.” Put your name there. Listen closely. “You got this.” Even better, I hear, “Rusty. I’ve got you.” If you can hear that, “I’ve got you.”

In a moment, the band is going to come up, and we’re going to receive our offering. I’m going to pray first. Oh Lord, we thank you for the race, the run that you’ve given us, the run that brings us to you, Lord. We just ask you as we leave here today, that you will continue to fuel us. We know we have to step out. We know we have to make the commitment to follow you. We’ve got to utilize you. We have to engage with you, Lord. We also know that you can give us courage. You can sustain us, as we live that out for you, as we live to get closer to you. Lord, we ask you to continue to bless us, keep us safe, keep us encouraged, and pull us closer to you. Lord, let us keep our eyes fixed on you as that pace car because we know that you want us to go to where our best can be for you. We ask you to bless our church. We ask you to bless this city. We ask you to keep everyone safe. Bring our brothers and sisters home safely from the Middle East. Lord, we just lift up all of these things in the blessed name of Jesus. Amen.