Let's pray together.  Father, right after that, we want to thank you for 2010, the good and the bad, and we want to dedicate 2011 to you.  We want to be your ambassadors.  We want to live like joyous and victorious Children of God in the midst of the generation that doesn't know you and may this be a year where we see our effectiveness increase.  That you were to use us right where we are, that we would enjoy who you are and that the Kingdom of God would to our lives be expanded.  We ask that in Jesus' name.  Amen.

For years now, CBS has had a television show called the Amazing Race, and it consists of 10 to 11 teams of two people each, relatives, friends, sometimes married couples, and they compete with one another.  They travel the world.  They collect clues.  They perform tasks and they meet up at little pit stops, they called them checkpoints.  And typically, the last team to arrive at that pit stop or checkpoint gets eliminated.  If you win the game, you get a million dollars.  That's quite a prize that is held out as well as all the expenses to fly you around the world to do these tasks.  A million bucks in the Amazing Race.

Well, when I first heard that CBS was doing that, I couldn't help but think that they ripped off John Newton's song, Amazing Grace.  In fact, I still think they did that because that's such a popular song, the most popular Christian song that's become now a part of our culture.

So, this morning I'm taking it back and I want to talk about the Christian life as the amazing race, because after all, it really truly is the most amazing journey that anyone could take.

I want to talk to you today about 2011s amazing race, that's really the name of my message this morning.  Something you discover in reading the Letters of Paul the Apostle.  He liked to speak about the Christian life in terms of athletics, a race.  It comes up a lot.  It's laced throughout his teachings.  For example in 1 Corinthians 9, he says, "Don't you know that all who run in a race, all run, but only one receives the prize?  So run in such a way that you may obtain the prize."  He said, "But Skip, in the Amazing Race, the prize is a million dollars.  What could be better than that?"  And there's things that are a lot better than that.

In continuing that thought in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul said, "All athletes practice strict self-control.  They do it to win a prize that will fade away.  We do it for an eternal prize."  I want you to consider this weekend, this first week in 2011 as the pit stop, our checkpoint in this amazing race.  Not to be eliminated but to be invigorated for further running.  It's a race toward Christ's likeness.  It's a race toward Godliness.  It's a race toward effective service in the kingdom.

You will have this year if you make it through to the end, 365 days, five hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds roughly.  Once that time is gone, you will never again get it back, so it would be whose all of us to put the maximum amount of effort and concentration into it.  Like I want you to put a little picture in your mind this morning as we go through our study, just as the background picture photograph in your brain.

You remember whenever there's an Olympic especially summer Olympics and you see the runners on the track and they have the HD close-up picture of the runners' face and you see the sweat and the intensity and the flared nostrils, the tightened lips that runner running to win.  Put that in your head.  You just think about all that they go through, all that they put their bodies through to get from the beginning of the track to the end.  It's quite amazing what the body goes through.

In a race, the body begins to overheat.  As it begins to overheat, the sweat glands release a liquid to cool down the body, but the body starts running low on sugar which is fuel for the muscles.  So a hormone is secreted from the pancreas telling the liver to release stored sugar into the bloodstream.

At that point, the legs and the heart need more blood flow, more oxygenation and so the brain signals the heart to beat faster for the legs and the heart.  As that happens, the blood flow to the internal organs of the body and the upper body shutdown by 80% to give blood flow to the heart and to the lower extremities, deep breathing at that point, where they sucking the air adds to the oxygenation.  And eventually, the blood vessels in the legs are able to distend and grow to 400% their normal size to accommodate the increase of the flow of blood, that kind of intensity, that kind of dedication to win a race and to win a prize.

Well, that's the thought in these verses, beginning in Verse 12 down to Verse 16, it's the same analogy, the same metaphor, the amazing race.  Verse 12 begins are thought.  Paul says, "Not that I have already attained or I'm already perfected, but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me."

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do for getting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Therefore, let us, as many as are mature have this in mind and if in anything you think otherwise God will reveal even this to you.  Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already obtained, let us walk by the same rule and let us be of the same mind."

There's five essentials that I want to show you in that text that we just read and we'll go through again coming through every little verse, five essentials for running the race, five essentials for 2011s amazing race.  The first essential to run the race well is to have dissatisfaction, a healthy, holy dissatisfaction.  To look at your life and say -- rather than saying, "You know, I've done enough, I can now go on cruise control.  I can now live in status quo."  To say by the grace of God, I'm going to go higher.  I'm going to go further.

Notice what Paul says in Verse 12.  "Not that I have already attained or I'm already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.  Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended."  Boy, is that relieving to hear?  Paul, the Apostle, a man who walked with Christ 30 years of his life.  We know his track record.  We know what he did.  If anybody could rest on their laurels and be self-satisfied, and say, "I've attained.  I've made it.  I've reached the point."  It would be Paul.  But he says, "I haven't done that.  I don't count myself to have apprehended."

If you go back a few verses, in fact, go back to Verse 4 of Chapter 3.  Paul is going through a little list of his past life, his past accomplishments and he says, "All of that I pushed aside as nothing that I might really win the prize which is Christ."  Go look at what he says.  Verse 4, "Though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks that he may have confidence in the flesh, I, more so."  And now here's the list, "Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning the law I was a Pharisee, concerning zeal, I persecuted the church, concerning righteousness which is in the law.  I was blameless."

But if anybody could say, "I've arrived."  It would be Paul.  He was the guy who had a vision of Christ on the Damascus road.  He was the guy through whom many healing miracles were performed in his life.  He was a guy through whom countless churches were started throughout the Roman Empire.  He was the guy who wrote half the New Testament.  He was the guy who was translated into heaven, taken into heaven and saw things.  Paul said, "That I can't even write about."  They were so amazing, unlawful for a man even to hear.

What this tells me as I read these two verses, it tells me number one, none of us can reach nor will reach perfection this side of heaven.  It's not going to happen.  Now, every now and then, I meet somebody who thinks it can happen and they think they have arrived and they're such a pain to deal with.  [Laughter] Somebody once said, "Perfection is for people who take great pains and give them to everybody else."  And that's so true.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, he once met a man who said he had arrived, he had attained, he had reached total sanctification in this life.  Spurgeon said, "Oh, really?"  And he did something that I don't necessarily recommend though, it sounds pretty fun.  He took a pitcher of water and poured it all over the man.  And the man started swearing.  And Spurgeon smiled and said, "I thought so." [Laughter]  "You haven't arrived.  Listen to what's coming out of your mouth."  And he just wanted to prove it.

Martin De Haan years ago said, "Self-satisfaction is the death of progress.  The most boring people I ever meet are the ones who take up my time telling me what they have done."  So none of us reaches perfection this side of heaven, it tells me something else.  It tells me that it's our imperfection.  It's our not having arrived that pushes us onward and upward.  It gives us the impetus to continue the race.  Now, that's very essential on a race.

Can you imagine a runner who during in the middle of the race just feels like he's got this thing nailed, it's in the bag.  There's no way he could ever lose?  He's going to start slowing down a little bit.  He's not going to give it all that he has.  And likewise, if we start comparing our running with the running of other Christians, it will ruin us.  Because we can always find other Christians who aren't running as well as we are, who are a little bit slower than we have been.  We have made it just a little bit better than that person because we like to compare ourselves to those who are lesser than we are.  So it's bad form to do that.  It's that healthy sense of dissatisfaction that pushes us onward and upward.

A few of you would recognize the name Handley Page.  If you know aviation, you might have heard of his name.  He was a British pioneer in aviation with the bi-plane way, way back when.  Handley Page was flying his plane when they took off and he heard in the cockpit annoying sound, which he knew was a rat.  A rat had crawled in the cockpit and was at some of the cables, the controls.  Well, he knew that that would -- that could mean complete disaster.  But he quickly remembered that rats can't live at high altitude.  So he pulled back on that control and gave it his much juice as he could and he climbed higher and higher and higher until finally the annoying stopped.  He had successfully killed the rat.

Think of your year that way.  The 2011, the 12 months coming up, think of it in that term.  As you consider your past year and you look back, would you say that there's progress in your spiritual growth?  Are you climbing higher?  Are there still rats that need to be eliminated?  David said, "I will be satisfied when I awake in his likeness."

I woke up this morning and I thought I'm not there yet.  I look to myself in the mirror and said, "Nope, I'm not yet in his likeness," and so, I realize I have further to go, higher to climb.  And so that we all.

So number one is dissatisfaction.  Second essential in running this race is concentration.  You have to concentrate on what you're doing.  Verse 13, "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but..."  Now, watch this phrase, "...one thing I do."  The Philip's translation puts it, "But there's just one thing that I'm going to concentrate on, one thing I do."  I've discovered that little phrase One Thing is a pretty important biblical phrase.  Let me give you the examples.

A rich young ruler came up to Jesus and said, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"  And Jesus said, "Well, you know the commandments and he rattled a few of them off."  And the rich young ruler said, "All of these I have kept from my youth."  Jesus turned to him and said, "One thing you lack."  And he nailed the very thing in his life that that man didn't concentrate on that he should have, one thing, narrowed it down, one thing.

When Martha was critical of her sister who sat at the feet of Jesus named Mary, because Martha was doing all of the work and Mary was sitting around enjoying Jesus and she complained to our Lord.  Jesus said back to her, "Martha, you are worried about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Narrow it down, Martha.  Think of that one thing."

When the blind man that we read about in John Chapter 5 was healed in the temple in Jerusalem, and he was interrogated by the Pharisees.  "Tell us who healed you?  What was he like?  What do you know about Him?  Were you really blind from birth?"  The blind man now healed said, "One thing I know, I was blind and now I see."  He kept it simple and narrow.

David said in Psalm 27:4, "One thing I have desired of the Lord and that will I seek after."  Listen, winners are winners in a race because they concentrate and specialize and they don't let other things distract them.  And if you discover that very few athletes can be proficient at anything more than one thing.  When you think Kobe Bryant, does that name evoke golf to you?  Do you think, "Oh, yes."  Golf, Kobe Bryant.  No, you think basketball.  When you think Tiger Woods, do you think football?  No.  They're good at one particular discipline.  They've narrowed their focus.  They're concentrating.  And that's an essential in our spiritual growth.

When Nehemia, in the Old Testament was building the wall with his fellow countrymen and he was at least tempted to be distracted by others who were saying, "You got to come down.  We got to talk to you.  This is really important."  Nehemiah said, "I am doing a great work.  I cannot stop and come and meet with you."  Learn a very spiritual word this next year.  It's the word, No.  Learn to say that.  It's as holy as the word yes.  Sometimes, doing too many things and spreading yourself too thin will kill your effectiveness in any one thing.  Don't major on the minors.  Keep the main thing the main thing.

I've always loved the story of Billy Graham, great evangelist as we all know.  Twenty-two different cities in America, a different times in his career offered him money and land to start a Christian university to train up young men for the ministry.  Every time he was offered it, Billy Graham turned it down.  And he said here's why, "I believe it would be a great distraction."  I shouldn't have done that, sort of just kills the whole story when I do.  [Laughter] But he said, "I believe it would be a great distraction to my preaching in my worldwide crusades.  Yes, I could do it, but that's not what God has called me to do.  He's called me to do this one thing."  So learn to focus and say No and say, Yes to what God has called you to do.

Wilbur Chapman, a Presbyterian evangelist now in heaven said, "My life is governed by this rule.  Anything that will dim my vision of Christ or take away my taste for Bible study, or cramp my prayer life, or make Christian work difficult is wrong for me, and I must as a Christian turn away from it."

So two essentials, dissatisfaction, concentration.  Here's the third, direction.  Direction, you got to know where you're going and where you're not going.  You need to learn to let go of certain things and go in one particular direction.  Look with me at Verse 13, "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do," and here it is, "For getting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the price of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

If you want to be miserable, live your life looking back over your shoulder.  "Oh, I could have -- oh, I should have."  I mean it's healthy to take an appraisal of your life, but once you let the past start bugging you down like that, it hinders your present running.  Imagine if a guy or a gal try to run a race in an Olympic race who was always looking back, "Where's everybody else?"  They wouldn't see where they're supposed to be going.  It would be detrimental to their race.

So forgetting what's behind.  Forget about it.  They say in New York, "Forget about it."  Now in the Bible, the words forget or forget this, don't speak of losing your memory as much as letting something influence you.  The Bible says that God remembers our sins, our inequities no more.  It's not that God has a bad memory.  It simply means that God won't let your past sins influence his present dealing with you.  He chooses to forget it.  He won't hold it against you.  So the past is the past.  And what happened in 2010 or before, let it go.  All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put your past back together again.  And the best example I know of somebody who did this successfully was young Joseph who is mistreated by his family, sold as a slave into Egypt.  Spent years in prison and he didn't let the past affect his present or his future, but rather, he turned to his brothers and he said to them, "You meant this for evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about as it this day to save many people alive."  Let it go.

You want to have a great new year, forget last year and think about what God has for you in the future this year.  So, dissatisfaction, concentration, direction.  Here's the fourth essential to run this race, determination.

Determination, look at Verse 12 and Verse 14.  Verse 12, "Not that I've already attained or I'm already perfect, but I press on."  Notice the word press and then in Verse 14 again, "I press toward the goal for the price of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  The idea of the word press is to exert, the idea is to put every ounce of effort and energy into something.  You might say, "Well, I thought that is not salvation by works."  We're not talking about salvation.  That's past.  You've been saved.  Once you are saved, it's that grace that should give you an eye of the impetus: to put every amount of energy into our Christian walk and run the race and press on.

I want you to see this and not miss how powerful a statement Paul is making.  Twice he uses the word Press, "I press on."  It's the same word that he used back in Verse 6.  Look at Verse 6, "Concerning zeal, persecuting the church."  The word persecuting is the same word as press, dioko is the Greek word, to exert.  Here's what Paul is saying, "The same amount of energy I use to put in ruining the church, I now put in to run in the race."  The same energy as an unbeliever I had to put out and stomp out this Christian movement.  I now use by God's grace to run the race that is set before me.

I wonder what would happen in 2011 if we put as much dedication into our spiritual life as we do into our hobbies in the fishing, in the football, in the knitting and do whatever other things we like to do.  If we put as much concentrated energy and time, by the end of 2011, what our spiritual life would be like?

In the movie, Chariots of Fire, one of the heroes portrayed was young Harold Abrahams who won the 1924 gold medal Olympic medal.  He was a runner.

The movie showed his first defeat on the track.  And after he was defeated, he walked over to the bleachers and he is pouting and he is down and out.  And he's girlfriend comes over and she tries to encourage him and he gets all huffy and he says in Scottish brag, "If I can't win.  I won't run."  And she smiles, puts her arm around him and says, "But if you don't run, you can't win."  [Laughter] Such good wisdom.  You don't quit because you didn't win.  You keep running because if you don't run, you can't win.  So stay at it, determination.

Now, Paul talks about the prize.  "I press onward and upward for the prize."  Two thousand years ago, you know what prize you would get if you won an Olympic race, you get a little circular crown made out of leaves, laurel leaves that was placed on your head.  That's pretty cool, huh?

All of that hard work, energy and sweat to get a little leaf on your head in a weak dissipate.  Now, sometimes they would go beyond that and they would make a little statue of you in your hometown or take away your tax base which would be a really great incentive for running a race but what is ours?  What price do we get in running the race?  What's our pay off for all of these concentration and direction and determination?  Well, there's two things.

Number one, you'll find out the very purpose of your life now, and number two, you'll find out the glories that come later.  Go to Verse 12.  Paul says, "That I may lay hold of that for which Jesus Christ laid hold of me."  In other words, what I'm looking for now is to understand why God picked me and called me.  Now, what my purpose for life is on this earth.  And I tell you what, to live with that knowledge is a great thing to live with.  To know why God put you here, what your purpose on this earth is.  It's a great, great incentive to have.

There's the second one on Verse 14.  He talks about the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  That is literally the call from above and that probably refers to enjoying our price after death.  After the believer is called in the glory and we crossed the finish line.  That's when it's the best.  Contrary to a very popular book, you don't get the best life now.  The Bible never promises your best life now.  The Bible always promises your best life later, the upward call, the heavenly call, the heavenly reward.  That's why Paul said to Timothy at the end of his life, his life was almost coming to an end.  He writes 2 Timothy, and among his final words were these, "I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the race.  I have kept the faith.  And now finally, there is laid up for me, a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, our righteous Judge will give to me on that day, but not only just to me but all those who love his appearing."

Here's the question, are you pressing?  Will that word characterize you?  Is there any effort you're exerting toward your spiritual life at all that you would say, "I'm pressing toward it.  I'm not only concentrating at it.  I'm determined because of it."

I don't exactly know what country, but I think it's Switzerland, when I read this story, that there's a graveyard at the base of one of the Alpine climbs, a mountain climber died.  He was buried there.  And on his gravestone is his name, date of birth, date of death and a simple three word epitaph, "He died climbing."  When I read that, I thought what a great thing to say of a mountain climber.  That was his pursuit.  He died while he was climbing.  It didn't say he died watching television.  He died watching others do stuff.  He died climbing, in the very pursuit that was his life.  It would be a great thing for us to have in ours, and he/she died climbing going onward and upward.

So dissatisfaction, concentration, direction, determination, all those are essential elements in this race.  Here's the fifth and final, participation.  In Verse 15 and 16, closes off the paragraph.  Paul says, "Therefore, let us, as many as are mature have this mind and if anything you think otherwise, God would reveal even this to you.  Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule.  Let us be of the same mind."  A few times, Paul repeats, we, us, us, us, because he wants us to know that it's not just about you running your race, but that you've got runners all around you, because runners to better in packs.  They encourage one another.  They give each other incentive by their running, they form an example and give instruction and inspiration, because there's going to be times this year when this race will get discouraging and you'll need the refreshment of other people in the race.

I wonder if I'm not speaking to a few believers who have gotten off the track.  They visit the track every now and then and they check in, but when it comes to running that race with concentration, with determination, with a healthy sense of dissatisfaction and pressing forward, and concentrating on one thing, you've left the track.  You've retired to the bleachers where you come to watch others run the race and you applaud them for doing so, or worse yet, you criticize them.  It's funny that sometimes, the criticism comes from the rank and file of people who have left the track and are sitting in the bleachers not doing anything at all, but criticizing those who are running the race.

One sports fan said, "Sports like baseball, football, basketball and hockey develop muscles and that is why Americans have the strongest eyes in the world."  [Laughter] Because we love to watch all that stuff.  Get on the track.

I had a friend.  He was my roommate, a very intellectual guy.  He asked me one day, "Skip, I'm going to be a runner.  I think running is a good thing for the body."  I said, "Great Mark!  Go buy some shoes."  You know what he went out and did?  He bought a book.  [Laughter] He bought a book called Running and he spent months reading a book on running.  In my shoes, he bought a book on running.  He looked at it and he'd underline little section, highlight little section, write little notes in the side, and then he'd followed me to the house, "Skip, listen to this."  He'd like quote me a verse.  [Laughter] I said, "Mark, you're not a runner until you buy shoes, get out there and run.  It's not that difficult.  Graduate from just reading about it to getting the shoes on and doing it."

So in this coming year, I want you to think progress, not perfection, not, "Am I perfect?"  Paul said, "I'm not perfect.  I've been doing this in 30 years.  I haven't achieved it or arrived."  So I want you to think progress, not perfection.  I want you to think the future, not the past and I want you to think together, not alone.  Forget the past, focus on the future.  Befriend other runners and most important, finish the race.  We don't know when the finish line is.

2010 I had the unfortunate privilege of burying many saints as it was their time to come home.  I don't know how many of us will make it through another year.  Many of us will have many years, some of us, our lives may be cut short this year.  But run and run and run and finish with joy.  That's what Paul said, "That I might finish my race with joy."  The year was 1968, the event was the Olympics, the place was Mexico City.  The particular event was the marathon, all the runners -- almost all of them had crossed the finish line.  A few strugglers were coming in to the great stadium in Mexico City.  As the last few were dragging their way through finishing the race, suddenly all of the spectators in the stand heard a siren toward the opening gate of the stadium and they all looked, and they saw one man barely making it through.  He had fallen.  His knee was blooded and bandaged.  His name was John Philip Akhwari.  He wore the colors of Tanzania and as he hobbled toward the finish line, the whole group of people in the stand sit up, and gave him applause, as if he had won the raise, and he was the last place.

When he finished the race, somebody asked him, "Why did you keep going?  You fell, you were injured.  You were disqualified.  There's no way you were going to win.  Why didn't you just quit?"  He said, "My country didn't send me 7000 miles to begin a race, but to end it, to finish it, and I finished it."  God put you on this earth not just to start a Christian journey, but to finish your race with joy.

Heavenly Father, as we think about our last year and we think about the progress that we've made or not, we think about the failures that we have all certainly taken part in.  We think of the victories and the joys that are ours.  Now, we come to the point where we put it all behind and we forget about that.  We want to learn from the past, but not let that affect negatively our present or our future.  And we focus now on what you have for us.  That we should say yes to, so that we might say no to all of the other things and I pray that we would concentrate on this one thing, that we might finish our race with joy.  In Jesus' name.  Amen.