Biblical Success - Running the Race of Life - Raising the BarSample

If we take a global perspective of life, knowing that there are Christ-followers on every continent and that many of them live in terribly poor countries and have little or no chance to escape the poverty they live in, and contrast their lot with those of us who live in the US or many other wealthy nations, we see that there is a huge disparity of resources among God’s children. And yet God loves us ALL equally. Red and yellow black and white WE are ALL precious in His sight, bearers of His image and, as believers, therefore it is truly a matter of God’s providence whether we are one or the other, rich or poor, and neither is good or evil. Being rich is not better than being poor, and is not a sign of God’s favor. In fact, the devil can use riches as he tried to do with Jesus in the desert to tempt him away from His mission.

There’s a silly old jive song that goes “It ain’t whatcha got its the way how you use it” that explains God’s level playing field. “To whom much is given much will be required.” (Luke 12:48b) says God’s standard seems to be performance versus opportunity. In God’s providence, we are born where we are born and when and to whom. He places us in circumstances of His choosing and in due time He saves us and calls us to serve Him in Christ as disciples using the resources that He provides.

As we run the race of our lives it is on the track that He designs for us, and He provides all that we need to do what He designs us to do. He gives every person free will and asks them to serve Him and not the world. The world of course doesn’t like that and does all it can to offer us alternative choices that generally have to do with our control, independence, comfort, and fleshly pleasure. In our lives, there can be only one Master and if we call ourselves Christian and Christ-followers our Master is Jesus and our enemy is His enemy the devil.

Notice that in our scripture today Jesus does not say “for some” or “for many” but uses the all-inclusive “no one.”

For our next session let’s read the scripture and again ask ourselves Do we have only one Master or two, or maybe a mix?