2 Timothy 4:7 - "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
I didn't get to see much because of Wednesday church, but the past year's athletic awards, called the ESPYs, were given out on TV last night on ESPN.
A man named Stuart Scott, an ESPN news anchor man, won the Perseverance Award for continuing his seven year battle against a rare cancer. I loved his quote, "To fight is to win." To me, such a statement could have come right out of a Holy Spirit Inspired Book of Quotations that also includes today's Bible verse from 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
Scott went on to say, "Death is not a loss to cancer. We all must die. How you battle when you're alive is how you win."
In the end, I don't know what Scott's faith is. But I do know that he not only inspired many, with his words noted above, but he spoke truth when he talked about crying with his mom, the greatest thing he could be was a father to his two daughters, and the gift of his many fans, friends, and coworkers who encouraged him to keep fighting.
As Christians, we're called by God to publicly acknowledge that all these assets that Scott named are gifts from God. And as Christians, we're called by God to lean on and then support all these people-assets that Scott named so there's mutual encouragement amongst all these personal assets that we believe are gifts from God. But in order to do that, we ourselves, as believers, must acknowledge that there's a battle to be fought, whether one has cancer or not, and a victory to be gained in the way we fight the challenges of each day, which rightly is both with confidence in the love and strength of God through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit and also with thankfulness and mutual encouragement for all our spouses, children, parents, and friends, especially fellow believers, that God has graciously given us to share our battles.
May God be praised through the way we fight our battles together as a team, today and always. Indeed!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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