Abiding in Christ: Perseverance | 2 Timothy 4:6-8
Brad O’Dell | January 29, 2023

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to John 15. This week is our last week in our Abide series, so we’re going to read a handful of these verses from John 15 one more time. I’m going to read verses 1-5. Jesus says,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

I’ll just read those five verses for us this week.

We’re in the last sermon of our Abide series, and I want to give a brief recap so that we can see where we’ve been and then put the final pieces on it. That’s really what we’re trying to do in this message today, put some final pieces on it.

We started right at the new year by asking for a commitment, a step, as it were, a step over the line of commitment to prioritize Jesus in your spiritual walk and in your daily lives in this new year. We grabbed this idea as we’re looking at this theme of abiding from John 15. We’re talking about this theme of constancy, of continuing, of remaining in and with Jesus and doing the things that we need to do to prioritize that in our walks in this new year. So we started by trying to take the step of commitment and then say, “Let’s put some pieces on it as we go and figure out what that takes as we go.”

Then we spent a couple of weeks looking at how we abide in God’s word and how that’s central to our walk with Jesus and abiding in Jesus, and also how we abide with God in prayer. We looked at those core spiritual disciplines and talked about a lot of practical helps of how we work these into our lives. We also dealt with some of the difficult things and some of those potential hang-ups that come up when we struggle to really work these things into our lives with regularity, that we know we would love to do.

If you haven’t heard those messages, I would really, really encourage you to go back and listen to them. Every single message has something unique and something additional to kind of add to this discussion.

Then we also looked at abiding in Jesus’ love. We talked about the fact that this is a vertical reality and a horizontal reality; that we abide with Jesus in relationship—that’s our vertical relationship, and that empowers us to then love people well in Jesus’ name through our horizontal relationships.

We also talked about how obedience is a key aspect of how we walk with constancy and faithfulness in our walk with the Lord.

Really, in this series we’ve been focused in the here and now, right? “These five weeks, what could we do this week to take another step, to build this out a little bit more? What are some things that I can start to change around in my schedule? What are some discussions I can have with my spouse? What are some disciplines we can start to walk in as a family to help us do these things and set some patterns for the new year?” Really, the focus, our frame of reference, has been right here, in the here and now.

In this message I want to continue to look there, but also I want to view this from a different vantage point, as you will. To do that I want to actually work mostly from 2 Timothy 4:6-8. Go ahead and flip there. I think in 2 Timothy we have a passage of Scripture that captures some of what we’ve been talking about as we’ve been talking about abiding in and with Christ. I want to spend some time there and look at it from this angle as our final message in this series.

I’m going to read 2 Timothy 4:6-8. It’ll be on the screen if you don’t have it in front of you. This is Paul at the end of his life writing to his most intimate son in the faith, Timothy. It’s the last letter we have of Paul’s; from all indications of his writing, his expectations, and all indications we have from the letter, he expected to be going to death soon. He expected to be passing from this earth soon and see Jesus face to face. This is right at the end of the letter, so these are some of the last words we have from the apostle Paul. It sets the context for us. He says this:

"For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."

What I want to do in this last sermon, this last message in this Abide series, is I really want to just press into those three statements in verse 7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” What I want us to do is maybe take ourselves outside of our week-to-week, our day-to-day, and put our minds and hearts to that final day. We’re not sure when it’ll be; none of us knows that time. But as best as we’re able to anticipate, what does that final day look like? That day where we know that the time for our departure is nearing. We’re on the threshold of this life to pass into the next and see Jesus face to face.

I want us to think, What will my life have looked like then? When I look back on it, I want to be able to say with the apostle Paul, “I’ve fought the good fight, I’ve finished the race, and I’ve kept the faith.”

What I want to do is look at each of those phrases. My outline is going to be:

1. Abiding Is Long Perseverance
2. Abiding Is a Long Battle
3. Abiding Is a Long Race

We’re going to open up each of those analogies. Just a little bit of a heads-up, I’m not going to be doing a lot of exegesis. I’m going to reference a lot of Scriptures, I’m going to put them on the screen. Just write those down; don’t be trying to flip through there, you’d probably rip the page out of your Bible if you’re going too fast. Just read them on the screen, write down the reference. What I’m trying to do is just ground what I’m saying in the Scriptures. We’re not trying to open up every single one of those in detail.

What I want to do is just take these metaphors and rest in them and see what we can learn from some of the metaphors that Paul is comfortable bringing to bear in these realities of perseverance and abiding in Christ.

1. Abiding Is Long Perseverance

We see that in the phrase, “I have kept the faith.” What Paul is saying is, “I have held fast. I have continued in it.” This really captures this idea when we’re looking at the phrase abiding. A lot of your translations will translate it “remaining,” remaining in Christ over the long haul, through all the seasons of life. Through all the things that would try to remove us from him, we remain through it all. What we see is a theological word we use called “perseverance.” We persevere to the end.

That’s what Paul is saying. He said, “I did it. I kept the faith. I persevered to the end.”

Let me read Colossians 1:22, where we see some of this language. Paul has this expectation in the Christian life that there is a continuing, there is a holding fast, there is a keeping in this pattern that we are supposed to do as Christians if we are to abide in Christ. In Colossians 1:22 he says, “Christ has reconciled you in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” That’s in the final day. He says, “—if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.”

That word “continue” that’s translated in the ESV is that same Greek word that they use in John 15 for abide. It’s the same type of idea, this continuing in this, this abiding in these things, this remaining in these truths or in these realities.

What Paul is saying is that he’s rejoicing that at the end of his life, by God’s grace, he can say, “I’ve done it. I’ve kept the faith. I stayed to it, I stood firm, I made my calling and election sure. I did it.”

Right here at the beginning I wanted to bring this reality to us again, that abiding is not something that just happens as we go about the Christian life. It’s something that requires some focus, it requires some diligence, it requires some sacrifice on our parts, it requires some hard work at times. It’s not all in our power—of course not—but abiding is something that takes a concerted effort.

I want to just ask you, as you look at that final day, as you fast-forward to the end, will you be able to say in that day that, “Over the long haul of faith, through all the seasons of life, I held fast, I continued in these things, I kept the faith”?

The real question is, will we start to set the patterns now? That’s really what we’ve been asking; that’s really what we’ve been trying to emphasize. That’s really what we’ve been asking God to teach us and show us and to work into our lives in this season as we think about abiding in Christ and setting those for the new year. Will I set the patterns now that will get me to that final day?

That’s Paul’s joy, is that he has persevered to the end. He’s held fast. He has remained. He abided in Christ.

However, Paul’s trust—we know this from everywhere else in Paul’s letters—is not in his own actions. It’s not the fact that, “Hey, I did it! I worked really hard and I accomplished all these things. Look at me!” Paul’s eyes are not on himself in this moment; Paul’s eyes are on God and Paul’s trust in his own keeping work but in God’s keeping power. Or, to say it in another way, his trust is not in his perseverance but in God’s persevering faithfulness.

Right before Jesus goes to the cross in John 17 we see this, just a couple chapters after John 15, where we’ve been focusing for this series. Right before he went to the cross, he prayed to the Father over his disciples, “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are one.” He also prayed, “Father, sanctify them in the truth.” He also prayed that “they whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me.”

Paul, in all of his writing, knows that this was Jesus’ prayer, this is the Father’s will, and it was not about what he can do or anything that he is accomplishing in his own power, but it is by God’s answer to Jesus’ prayer that he would keep them because he is faithful.

Let me read a couple verses for you. Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

In 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 he says, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”

We need this firm foundation under our feet as we’re seeking to do these things. We’ve talked about it. It takes some discipline; it takes some hard work. It takes some sacrifice on our part. As we seek to do these things and as we seek to persevere and to hold fast through all the hard times of life, let us remember that all provision for us has been made in Jesus. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

This is the good news of the gospel. The good news of the gospel is not just that Jesus saved us by his grace in love, but that he will complete our salvation by that same grace and because of that same steadfast love.

Church, as we seek to abide in Christ, as we seek to persevere, as we seek to hold fast, as we seek to do the hard work of persevering in the Lord, let us remember that this great truth is sure. It is stable. God’s power is enough, and God has committed himself to you. Let us never get tired of that truth, let us never take it for granted. We need to always be putting it as a firm foundation on our feet, and only from that place do we step out and we start to act out the grace that God has already worked into our lives. Let us put the firm foundation ever under our feet. We need to stand firmly in it. As we do, we will find that we stand firm till the end.

Charles Spurgeon says it like this—I think it’s a wonderful quote. He says,

This is what we are looking forward to, that God, who taught us to repent, will sanctify us wholly; that he who made the briny tear to flow will wipe every tear from that selfsame eye; that he who made us gird ourselves with the sackcloth and the ashes of penitence will yet gird us with the fair white linen which is the righteousness of the saints. He who brought us to the cross will bring us to the crown. He who made us look upon him whom we pierced and mourn because of him will cause us to see the king in his beauty in the land that is very far off. He who looked upon us when we were dead in sin and called us to spiritual life will continue to regard us with favor until our life shall be consummated in the land where there is no more death, neither sorrow nor sighing.

What a sweet truth! Let us never forget it. Let that be our source of strength, let that be our zeal, let that be our passion, let that be the firm foundation under our feet as we engage in this lifelong effort to persevere in this faith that God has saved us in. Let us always remember that there is grace upon grace available for every step of the journey.

That was my first point: that abiding is long perseverance. Now I want to press into these other two metaphors that Paul uses in 2 Timothy 4, the metaphor of the battle or the long fight and the battle of the long race.

2. Abiding Is a Long Battle

What Paul says here are three statements that really are all saying the same thing. When he says, “I have fought the good fight,” what he’s saying is, “I’ve fought the good fight of abiding in Christ and keeping the faith.” When he says, “I have finished the race,” he’s saying, “I’ve finished the long race of keeping the faith and staying true to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I want to just make a few exhortations related to each of these metaphors, the battle and the race, impress them home, and see what might be helpful for us to take from it.

(1) Abiding is a long battle, so number one, know your enemy. We have an enemy. We have enemies that are arrayed against us, powerful enemies that will fight us every step of the journey toward that final day, toward that day when we stand on the threshold of stepping into the kingdom of God.

One of our enemies is spiritual forces. We see this in Ephesians 6:10-12. Paul says,

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

The apostle Peter says it like this: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

That’s the first thing we have to recognize. We have spiritual forces set against us, contending against us, in this battle to abide in Christ. Have we taken that seriously, and have we taken it into account? Are we drawing upon the strength of our champion, Jesus, to defeat those day after day?

Here’s something that you’ll know as you read through the Scriptures a little bit more on this. The enemy sometimes fights in a very obvious, full-frontal assault. Prepare yourself for that day; expect it; it will happen. The Christian walk is not one of comfort and ease primarily. There are times of it, but it’s not one where we’re going to just kind of casually waltz into the kingdom of God just full of life and joy without anything battling against those, right? There’s a war happening, and we are to engage in it.

Here’s the thing about the enemy: he usually fights through deception and enticements. It usually doesn’t look like someone from your work coming up to you and saying, “Hey, have you ever thought about divorcing your wife? You should do that!” Maybe that will happen, and you say, “Whoa, no! Get away from me! That’s wrong.”

What he’s really going to say is, “Hey, it’s alright; you work hard, you can come home, you can kick up your feet, your wife knows you love her, and you can probably take this night off.” It looks like a long pattern of taking for granted these things and not actually pouring into it.

Maybe it looks like finding some things that you know can lead you into distraction or lead you into some type of emotional affair of sorts, and you think, “Hey, there’s no big deal. I know what it is; I can be okay with this.”

Or it might be taking in certain doctrine that you know, “Well, this makes me feel good and I feel like this is right,” or, “I feel like this is good for my soul, even if I don’t quite think it’s right to God’s word, and I get a lot of encouragement out of it.” It might just look like—hey, that happens sometimes; you can assess it, you can check it for its merits. But if it’s a long pattern of this, there’s just a long pattern of enticements, of another step, of another dissuasion away from what the Lord has called you to. Deceptions and enticements; keep an eye out for that from a supernatural enemy who would love to lead you astray.

But also another enemy of ours is our own flesh. Really, I think this is the most pernicious. This is the one that we carry with us every moment of every day. The apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 2, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” Galatians 5: “The desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. These are opposed to each other.”

You see, there’s not just a battle out here that you need to be wary of and learn to engage in, there’s a battle constantly happening in here. I think a lot of us feel this, we kind of know it, but it’s something that we can always try to be saying, “All my problems are out here,” and when things are going wrong in our lives sometimes our first step is not to look in, confess, repent, and find fresh life and fresh restoration and revival in our spirits and in our souls.

The thing about our flesh is that it works in concert with that supernatural enemy who’s trying to lead us astray. Our flesh wants to receive those deceptions. It wants to be lured by those enticements. It’s like a traitor behind the gates, letting in the enemy’s devices in every way they can.

We have a great battle in front of us, and we need to know our enemies.

I’m going to read this quote by Scott Hubbard; I think he speaks to these realities well. He says,

As long as we carry both spirit and flesh, war will be normal. We should not be surprised, then, when we find within us a dreadfully strong pull not to pray when we know we need to pray; or an aching longing to satisfy some craving for food, sleep, drink, sex, entertainment, that we know we should refuse; or a heavy lethargy when the Spirit bids us to share the gospel or serve our family; or a fickle forgetfulness that dulls the morning zeal by early afternoon; or a driving compulsion to lean on our own understanding rather than the revealed word of God. We should not be surprised in such moments any more than an army should be surprised by enemy fire.

We’re in a battle. When we’re seeking to abide in Christ, this is an embattled reality. Have we taken stock of that, and are we gearing up for war?

(2) That takes me to the second point: outfit yourself for battle, because abiding in Christ is a long war, it’s a long battle. Outfit yourself for the battle.

I’ll go back to Ephesians 6. The apostle Paul says,

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

It’s wonderful imagery, and a lot of us really like this passage, right? We’re like, “Oh, yes, battle! I like armor!” Right? But I want us to connect this to what we’ve been talking about in this Abide series. What is Paul talking about here? I think what he means is these realities we’ve been talking about. This is the spiritual disciplines, daily, of abiding in the word and abiding in prayer and abiding in love and abiding in obedience or with obedience. All those realities, I think, can be read into that passage, that these are the things that happen as you are abiding in Christ in those ways.

What I want us to see is that these aren’t just things that we should do in a day and maybe we can figure it out and work them in at the end of the day. This is the armor that we are to don to go into the battle day after day.

If you were in a battle, you would not walk out of your tent and say, “I don’t know, I’m busy this morning. I haven’t showered in a couple days; I’m going to spend time doing that. Then I’m going to catch up with some buddies, because they’ve been on the other front lines and I haven’t been over there, so I’m going to go talk with them. I don’t know—putting on my armor just takes forever! So maybe I’ll get to it later in the day—we’ll see.”

You don’t do that! You’re in a battle. The first thing you do is you put on your armor and you make sure you have your weapons to engage in the things that you’re going to have to engage in that day.

I want us to start treating our spiritual disciplines like that. We’re in a battle. This isn’t a game. There’s grace and there’s joy and there’s life and there’s excitement and there’s community around us all those things, but it is not a game, and it definitely isn’t easy. I want us to take these things and to stop.

(3) My third point is this: because we are in a long battle, let us stay vigilant. Right after those verses in Ephesians 6 Paul says, “To this end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints . . . .”

Peter says it like this: “Be sober-minded; be watchful.” He says that right before he talks about the enemy who prowls around like a lion.

What this brings to mind—this idea of vigilance—first of all, it brought two things to mind. Brian wrote a whole book on the spiritual discipline of watchfulness. I would highly recommend it, and it’s going to be a lot better than what I pack into these couple minutes that I’m talking about this. It’s out on the bookshelf; get it. It’s one of those neglected spiritual disciplines that is so, so important, and it’s captured or caught up in this reality that we face a daily battle to persevere in our walk with the Lord.

It also brought to mind a character from the Harry Potter series, a guy named Mad-Eye Moody. If you haven’t seen the series, Mad-Eye Moody is this wizard, and he’s really focused on catching dark wizards. He’s a good guy, and he’s really focused on catching dark wizards. So what he has is a magical eye in his head (because he lost his eye at a different point, from a dark wizard), and it spins around all the time. It’s really creepy and disconcerting. But he’s constantly looking around him, looking inside, looking behind. He can look through his head. He’s trying to keep an eye for any dangers there might be. When he’s teaching the students, he’ll have this thing that he’ll bark out—he’ll say, “Constant vigilance! Constant vigilance!” This is his thing; you have to stay vigilant all the time, because he thinks there are dark wizards everywhere, behind everything. He’s a little crazy. He’s Mad-Eye.

But I think there’s something for us in that image when we’re engaging in the battle. There’s something to being constantly vigilant. When you’re in the battle, when you’re on the front lines, when you’re at the battle front, things can happen at any time, and it’s good to be constantly vigilant, to stay vigilant. It’s good to be watchful at all times.

I want to just put this caveat on this. This isn’t a fearful, “Oh no, everything’s coming to get me! Everything’s coming to get my family! I’m just going to try to keep everything at arm’s distance and I’m going to walk my life in fear,” type of vigilance. That’s not what it is. It’s a type of vigilance that says, “We are the strongest kingdom by a thousandfold around. We have the best gates, we have the best walls, we have the best army, and we have a King who is all-wise and all-knowing and all-powerful, and he has surely won the battle, he surely will win the battle. However, we still need to man the front. When I’m on the wall, I keep watching, so that the enemy doesn’t just waltz in and have his will.”

Yes, Jesus will win, but the enemy still has power to do damage. So let us stay watchful in the confidence that Jesus, our champion, has won the victory, he will win the victory, but let us be looking out for the dangers that are to come. Let us be looking for those fiery darts from the enemy so that we can actually defend ourselves with the shield of faith and not be caught unawares.

J.C. Ryle says this—I’ll wrap this section up with this: “Would anyone fight the fight of a Christian soldier successfully and prosperously? Let him abide in Christ, get closer to Christ, tighten his hold on Christ every day that he lives.”

That’s the focus. Every single day that we live is a battle. That’s a tough reality to face, but it’s something that we have strength and provision and grace upon grace for, and power in our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. Abiding Is a Long Race

My last point: abiding is a long race. Paul says, “I have fought the good fight,” but also, “I have finished the race.” Abiding is a long race.

This is a common analogy used in Scripture for the Christian walk. We see this in a number of places, speaking about the Christian as an athlete, speaking about the Christian as a runner. Hebrews 12 is probably one of the best instances of this; I’ll read just a couple verses there.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith . . . .

To abide in Christ is to engage in a long race. There are some things that we can learn from running long races that I think apply to our spiritual walk. I just want to list a few of them here.

Because abiding is a long race, we need to pace ourselves. Pace yourself. Anytime you engage in a long race, you don’t just sprint as hard as you can right at the outset of it and hope that that maintains, right?

Also, in training for the race, this is something you don’t do. If you’ve ever trained for a marathon you know that those days where you’re really trying to stretch yourself and add miles on and do that long run, you only do that one day a week. You usually have a long-run day. All the other days of the week you actually run a shorter amount, two to four miles, maybe, and then on Sundays or on Saturdays you’re like, “Now I’m going to try to do ten miles, and next week I’m going to try to do eleven miles. The next week I’m going to try to do twelve miles.” You just work your way up like this.

But what’s really weird about it is you don’t have to do that very often. Six days a week you’re just running at a really easy pace—a couple miles, general pace. There’s something about running that you have maintenance days and you have long days.

In the Christian walk, we need to kind of have the same attitude, I think, a lot of times. We need to have a pace that is our maintenance pace, and then know that there will be times where we have to run hard. But if we’re running hard all the time and we’re just expended and we’re giving our all and we’re spent, we’re not going to make it very well. We’re not going to do very well.

We spoke about this at the beginning of the series; I’m just going to mention it again. This is the concept of building margin into our lives: that space between what you currently have on your plate and what you’re absolutely capable of. There needs to be some gap there.

All of us in our budgets budget money for the times when something unexpected happens, or we set aside money just for a little bit of a cushion in various areas. But hardly any of us budget time. We treat it as a resource that we can just spend as fast as it comes and not really think about setting aside any for things unexpected or things for a little bit of cushion.

If you’re trying to walk this Christian walk running at a hard pace this whole time, you’re going to burn out. You’re going to get smoked, and it’s going to create some damage in a lot of different areas.

Now, maybe some of you have walked this Christian walk for a lot of years and you’ve experienced something like that. You have these wonderful seasons, right? Maybe it’s at the new year; you heard a great series on abiding, and you’re like, “Awesome! I’m going to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this, but I’m also going to maintain all the other things I was doing.” You just go hard, hard, hard, and then in mid-Leviticus in your reading plan you tap out. You don’t read the Bible for maybe six months after that.

What happened? You spent yourself. You ran yourself dry. Have a maintenance pace, and then know that there are times that you need to run harder, but we need to pace ourselves.

Another thing that kind of comes into this idea of pacing ourselves or training ourselves in this holistic way is the idea of rest. God has built into his creation and into his plan these rhythms of rest, and I would encourage us to take part in them. In the Old Testament God, in his creation and in his instruction to the Israelites, he had the Sabbath day. This was supposed to be a day of rest and restoration and focusing and filling ourselves up in the Lord.

Then he also had feast weeks, a few times a year where people got away for a whole week, and there were spiritual exercises they were doing, but it was also a time to go and feast and celebrate with family.

I think a lot of us kind of have this idea in our minds, and we know it’s a good thing, and we find that we don’t do it very well. If you’re going to run this race well, take advantage of the rhythms of rest that God has given us.

We have daily times for rest; evenings. The sun goes down, everything gets dark. God planned it that way, right? You can’t see anything; go rest inside. Right? Take some rest every single evening. Don’t run yourself to the end point all the time.

Weekly rhythms; we need weekly rest, a Sabbath day. Try to see what that looks like in your life. What’s a Sabbath day look like? What do some Sabbath moments look like over many days, so you can have those moments of rest weekly?

Then yearly—find some time to get away. Brian mentioned this a couple weeks ago. Find some time to get away, focus on the Lord, be filled up in him, and rest. Sleep long. Take naps. Get away with the Lord and be filled back up in his strength. Rhythms of rest.

The second thing we need to do (because we’re running a long race) to abide is we need to maintain health. If you’re going to run a marathon, you can’t just be eating anything you want and sleeping however you want, right? When you’re doing that and there’s a high demand on your body, something has to change or you will break down and there will be damage. We have to maintain our health.

Let me read you 1 Corinthians 9, another time that Paul uses this metaphor of the race. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control . . . .”

That’s the idea: disciplines, self-control. It’s a spiritual fruit. It’s one of the fruit listed in Galatians 5 when it’s talking about the fruit of the Spirit. Self-control.

For a lot of us, this is a discipline where we need to seek the Lord and find, “What does this mean in my life?” Maybe just let me ask you this question: What does your daily diet look like? What are you taking in day after day? If you’re going to run a long race, you need to be feeding on the right things, you need to have the right nutrition. What does your daily diet look like? Of all the stuff you take in through your ears, of all the stuff you take in through your eyes, how much of it makes you rejoice in the Lord, reminds you of the gospel, encourages you in your walk with the Lord? How much of it spurs you to go and serve someone in Jesus’ name and live as an ambassador of Christ?

We live in a world of informational junk food. It’s good! It’s really well-packaged; it’s expertly packaged. It’s really entertaining. It’s easy to digest. I don’t really have to think about it, it hardly stresses me at all. I can listen to hours of podcasts and not feel like I’m exhausted at all. But what did I just pour into my body?

I don’t think those things are bad; I listen to podcasts as well. But I do think we should look at, “What’s my daily intake, and how much of it is good, nutritious things from the Lord, and how much of it is just junk food? How much of it was absolute poison?” That might be out there as well. It’s a way to assess.

I’ll speak to this in this point, too: that’s the impact of our physical health on our spiritual health. If you’ve walked the walk of faith long you know this. On days where you don’t sleep well and you’re sore or you just don’t feel good, maybe you’re sick, usually you’re not really focused on just spending really good, concentrated time in the word of God, and you’re really not just full of love and graciousness to pour into others. Right? We’re holistic beings, and our physical health actually does impact our spiritual health.

Also our emotional health impacts our spiritual health. We can’t neglect those things and expect to run the long race and persevere well. It’s something to look into, something to see, “What’s a step I can take?” Not all of that is in our control, but some of it is.

The next point is that if you’re going to run a long race you have to learn to train through injury. Not many people know this, but what you can build up to over five or six months of daily training in a marathon can be lost in a matter of a week to a week and a half if you stop running. All of that stamina, all of that momentum, all of those muscles working, can be lost in about a week to two weeks if you stop running.

I think a lot of us in our Christian walks come through these periods of injury. What I have in mind here are sins in our lives, times where we fall, times where we falter, but also maybe just seasons of loss and grief. Those are heavy times.

What we do is essentially, to lick our wounds or to deal with this, we pull out. We pull out on the walk, we pull out of the daily discipline. Sometimes we can pull out for a long season. If you’re going to run the race well, you need to know how to run through injury and work through injury.

Most people will say if you hurt yourself that it’s not totally great to just completely check out all the time and not do anything. Usually you have to have some type of activity to help regenerate the things that you injured. Learn to train through injury.

The last point is this: as we run the long race of abiding in Christ, we need to keep our eyes on the goal. Pretty much everywhere Paul speaks like this, he has a goal in mind. His eyes are set forward on something, and I think it’s instructive for us.

2 Timothy 4:8 says, “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness [that’s what he has his eyes on], which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day.”

Philippians 3:14: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Colossians 3:1: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”

Hebrews 12, what we just read, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus.”

In a race, if you’re looking down at your feet, first of all, you can go off the path, but also all you see are your heavy footfalls, and it doesn’t really give you encouragement for where you’re going. Keep your eyes on the goal, look to Jesus. There is a day—this is what I wanted this whole message to be—there is a day where we will see Jesus face to face. There is a day when all that is difficult, all these battles we’re experiencing, all this pain that we’re going through, will be done. Keep your eyes on the goal, keep your eyes on the champion, keep your eyes on the one who has gone before you as your strength and as your hope. Abiding is a long, long race. Let’s keep our eyes on the goal so we know where we’re going and remember what we’re doing in this life, in all the craziness.

I’m going to leave you with this quote by J.C. Ryle. I want it to serve as just a wrap-up of this whole series, an admonition for us.

“Church, as we seek to abide in Christ, let us live on Christ, let us live in Christ, let us live with Christ, let us live to Christ. In so doing we shall prove that we fully realize that Christ is all.”

That’s our heart for this church, that’s our heart for ourselves, that’s our heart for you this year. Let’s get after it and see what the Lord does in our lives. Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you, we love you. Jesus, we thank you that you have given us everything we need for the long battle, that you have given us all the strength we need for the long race. We thank you that we have your example, that you’ve gone before us and you’ve already defeated the great enemies of our soul. God, we want to walk in the fullness of the life that is ours in Christ. We want to face the hard times with strength, grounded in the realities and the truths of the gospel, and we want to maintain, we want to remain, we want to abide over the long haul. Lord Jesus, we ask that you would do the work in our minds and in our hearts and in our families now to set the pattern, to set the rhythms, to teach us about ourselves, teach us about you—all those things—so that we can set the pattern, so that on that final day, whenever that day comes, we can say with the apostle Paul in joy and in glory to you that we have fought the good fight, we’ve finished the race, we’ve kept the faith. That’s our heart, Lord. We ask you for these things in the name of Jesus, amen.