Are You Fit To Win?
1 Corinthians 9:25-27 (Amplified Bible)
25Now every athlete who goes into training conducts himself temperately and restricts himself in all things. They do it to win a wreath that will soon wither, but we [do it to receive a crown of eternal blessedness] that cannot wither.
26Therefore I do not run uncertainly (without definite aim). I do not box like one beating the air and striking without an adversary.
27But [like a boxer] I buffet my body [handle it roughly, discipline it by hardships] and subdue it, for fear that after proclaiming to others the Gospel and things pertaining to it, I myself should become unfit [not stand the test, be unapproved and rejected as a counterfeit].
A few years back I was what one would call a gym rat, I loved the gym. I loved to work out. I would push myself to uncanny limits and try my hardest to hang with the “big boys.” But I will never forget when I decided to add running into my repertoire, I thought because I had some strength, training and because I walked five miles every day that I would be able to adapt to running with no problems. So I jumped into it with no thought that I would have to do this in moderation, or that I would have to begin slowly, I just got out there trying to hang with people that had been conditioning themselves to run for quite some time. Needless to say, after a short while my body let me know what it thought of that, and after a major head rush, dizzy spell and nausea, I realized that just as with my weight training and walking I had to start to condition my body for running and that I was not just going to win the race the first time out.
It is so funny that we get saved and we are so excited and everything is new. We learn a few scriptures and we think I am ready to fight the devil head on. Or we have been walking with the Lord for a minute and we have been studying but not praying that much, or we have been praying without fasting and we run out to conquer the world and find ourselves hitting a brick wall. Our mind is all tore up, or body is overworked and under nourished and our spirit doesn’t know what to make of any of it. We have lacked conditioning ourselves for the race. We may have lacked the time with God, or the time in the word, the time in prayer or the time in fasting, but whatever it is we find we are trying to run a race at a pace we are not yet conditioned to handle. Have we lifted some weight of the word, have we run the marathon of prayer and fasting, have we put the right spiritual nutrition in our bodies for the race that is set before us?
There are so many events to be entered and so many medals to won for the Kingdom and for His name sake are we fit to win? If not it is conditioning time. It is time to get on the track. It is time to read the word, spend time with the Father, pray and fast and work it out, to walk it out, to run it out, to lift it up, to overcome, to get yourself conditioned and fit to win . The race is not given to the swift nor to the strong BUT TO HE (OR SHE) THAT ENDURES TO THE END!
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