In reading the New Testament, and particularly the
letters of the Apostle Paul, I'm sure you
have noticed how very often he makes use
of language and metaphors from the athletic field
in order to indicate something of the seriousness
of the Christian life.
There are quite a number of passages in
which the Apostle does this, and indeed there
are other writers in the New Testament likewise
who do the same thing.
I want to take two of these this
morning, the one more as a background and
suggesting the main title of our message, One
Thing I Do, and the other perhaps enunciating
the principles underlying that title and underlying the
thought of the Apostle when he said concerning
himself, One Thing I Do, against the background
of the games as we shall see.
So I would like to read first of
all from Philippians chapter 3, verses 12, 13,
and 14.
Not that I have already obtained all this,
says the Apostle, having spoken about the maturity
and the mature aspect of Christian life, not
that I have already obtained this, or have
already been made perfect, but I press on
to take hold of that for which Christ
Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers, I do not consider myself to have
taken hold of it, but one thing I
do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward
what is ahead, I press on toward the
goal to win the prize for which God
has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Now that is one, and the second we
have already heard in our reading this morning,
but I want again to read the relevant
verses.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 24 to
27, Do you not know, asks the Apostle,
that in a race all the runners run,
but only one gets the prize?
Run in such a way as to get
the prize.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into
strict training.
They do it to get a crown that
will not last, but we, we do it
to get a crown that will last forever.
Therefore, I do not run like a man
running aimlessly.
I do not fight like a man beating
the air.
No, I beat my body and make it
my slave.
So that after I have preached to others,
I myself will not be disqualified for the
prize.
This language does not simply imply the exclusion
of other alternative goals for living.
One thing I do.
It also and very particularly implies the harnessing
of all the faculties of the soul.
All the limbs and members of the body,
all the powers innate in mind, spirit and
body and soul.
It involves the harnessing of everything together and
the mobilizing of all our possessions as well
as our persons to do one thing.
So that there is no dissipation of effort,
no division within ourselves, so that with our
hands we do one thing, with our lips
we do another, with our possessions we use
them for one end whilst we sing the
glory of God on the other hand.
Everything is harnessed and everything is used, everything
is mobilized to one, one solitary end.
Paul's own being was entirely dedicated to the
achievement of one thing.
Now you might well be tempted to think
that that is narrow-mindedness.
Well, not really.
Because he brought the whole universe of his
life, the gigantic abilities and gifts and powers
that God had given him from every area
and used them to the one end for
which life had been given him, for which
he had been not only created but redeemed.
And in so doing he became a man
who was capable of bringing blessing to Jew
and Gentile, to rich and poor, to cultured
and illiterate, to men and women of his
own day, and let it be heard down
through the centuries of time to this very
day.
If by that you mean narrow-mindedness, God
give it me, God give it you.
If two thousand years from this morning men
and women will bless your name and mine
for our contribution by the grace of God,
then let us be called narrow-minded in
our day.
Taking Paul's affirmation in Philippians 3.13 then
as our subject, I want to illustrate some
of the principles that are involved in living
life as the apostle lived it.
This one thing I do.
For this he lived.
For this he taught.
For this he died.
And for this we bless God on his
account today.
Three things very simply, three things I want
to focus on this morning.
I think they challenge us at the beginning
of a new year.
At any rate, let me confess that they
challenge me.
And I cannot look at these passages and
miss the note of earnestness, the note of
appeal, the sense of seriousness here.
And I trust that something of that will
come through to all of us and bring
us alongside of the apostle to be prepared
to abandon things that are unnecessary and to
harness all the energies of our souls and
of our lives to this one thing for
which God first created us and then in
Christ made us anew.
Now the first thing is this.
The apostle is aware of the fact that
there is a purpose to achieve in life.
There is a purpose to achieve.
Now you and I have heard this many
times before.
I'm sure all of us have faced the
challenge of it.
But let's look into the face of it
again on this first Sunday morning of a
new year.
Brothers and sisters, you and I are not
here to go around in circles.
You and I were not made just to
go on sauntering through life.
Neither have we been kept for it.
Neither were we redeemed by blood for that
purpose.
God has a purpose for you and for
me.
And I suggest to you that the overriding
question for every honest Christian today is am
I involved in the fulfillment of God's plan
and purpose for my life?
My main concern should be not whether I'm
having a good time, not whether I am
happy or sad.
Now that may be terribly hard to hear.
It is equally hard to say.
But my main concern should be whether I
am fulfilling the purpose that the Creator had
for me and the Savior had for me
when he brought me up out of the
horrible pit and the miry clay, set my
feet upon the rock.
And according to principle, establish my going.
You see, life is not meant to be
an aimless dawdle, a sauntering through quietly, calmly,
just having a good old time.
It has a serious element to it.
Neither is it meant to be a merry
-go-round in which we simply pass through
a series of routine experiences or activities always
coming back to the same point.
In the graphic language of the Apostle Paul,
used in a number of places, whether we
like it or not, when we were born,
we were born on to what he speaks
of as a course, a running course, a
running track.
Now there may be a mixture of metaphors
here, but this is it.
He tells the Ephesians, categorically, that they were
born on to the course of this world,
the track of this world.
You see, there is a track.
This whole world is moving in a certain
direction, whether we realize it or not.
This whole universe is moving away from God.
It is moving in a direction of godlessness,
toward chaos, toward disaster.
That's the biblical understanding.
And says Paul, we came into this world,
we were born on that course, we were
moving with the world, and the power of
Satan had his rule over us and his
reign over us, and believe it or not,
he says, we were born dead, spiritually, not
physically, of course.
And like dead people, we are moving with
the tide, and we're going with the crowd,
and we're on the course of this world.
Now the Christian life begins by changing courses.
We're summoned to halt, and to repent, and
to turn around, and to change sides.
And this is the gigantic decision of life.
It's to change courses.
It's to move from the course of this
world, and to begin to walk what the
New Testament says, the way.
Jesus said, I am the way.
And in Acts chapter 9 and in other
places, Christian people in New Testament days were
called, sometimes, the people of the way, you
see.
They've come off the course of this world,
they've turned right around, they've moved on to
another, and they're moving in the opposite direction,
they're the people of the way.
Now, are you on that course?
This is how, you see, the apostle uses
the image of a race as indicative of
the Christian life.
We have left the course of this world,
we've come on to the race that God
had prepared for us.
But now the sad thing is this, you
see.
Even when we get on the course that
God has ordained for us, and we've joined
the people of the way, and we're moving
in the right direction, we can quarrel among
ourselves, and we can get caught up with
stupid little things on the way, rather than
run the race that is set before us.
And each one of us can make little
things our idols, and even ourselves, even when
we're on the course, even when we're facing
the right direction.
And so we've lost the sense of seriousness
that the New Testament has to life.
Oh, there is joy in the New Testament.
You don't need me to repeat that, and
I'm not meaning to deny that.
But you do not have Christian joy until
you take things seriously in the first place.
Any joy you have when you don't take
the calling of the New Testament seriously is
not the joy of the Holy Spirit.
For the Holy Spirit's joy is always a
joy in fulfilling the will of God, never
in anything else.
And there is much joy to be had
today just in doing our own thing.
That's the only joy that some people have.
They say, oh, I'm doing my own thing.
And they jig and they sing and they
talk about it.
But the New Testament joy, the joy of
the Holy Spirit, is quite different from that.
Not I, but Christ.
Though all Christians are thus placed on this
course by virtue of their calling and of
their redemption and of the work of the
Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters, it is possible
for us to saunter and to dawdle and
to move with a snail's pace.
Though we say we are fleeing from the
wrath to come and we say we are
going to a heaven that is blessed, and
yet we move like snails, neither eager to
get away from hell, nor to go into
heaven.
And you see, it contradicts everything we believe.
Or we say we believe.
This kind of thing happened to a number
of churches in the New Testament.
And it certainly happened to a number of
individuals.
Oh, they're on the right road.
They're moving with the people of the way.
They're moving in the right direction.
But their pace was slackened.
Paul, writing to the Galatians, for example, poignantly,
painfully asked them, who, he says, has bewitched
you?
You were running so well, he says.
Who's bewitched you?
Somebody's cast an evil eye on you.
You know the picture is of people running
on a racetrack.
And there's somebody on the side of the
racetrack who's doing something to catch their attention.
And the runner looks at the person on
the side.
He gets all wrapped up and he forgets
where he's going.
And he stumbles and he falls.
Who's bewitched you?
He says.
Are you a bewitched saint?
Have you been caught by something on the
sidetrack?
And you're stumbling and you've never been able
to get over it.
And life thereafter is like a wounded animal
trying to run.
Never healed.
The Christian life may be legitimately described under
the image of a race.
The Christian life is a race which we
should run with a set purpose, says Paul,
of winning the prize.
Now, in the Greek games, which serve as
a background to these four-line passages, as
in our games and in the Olympics and
any others, it's generally only one person who
wins the prize.
Of course, that's a truism.
Unless, of course, two people may come in
and press the tape simultaneously.
Well, they share it.
That's a rarity.
So, generally speaking, unless it's a team effort,
one person wins the prize.
But now, says Paul, to all the saints,
all of you run, he says, but all
of you may win.
You say, that doesn't make sense to me.
Well, no, no, because we're dealing with eternal
dimensions, you see.
And this is not in accordance with the
principles of the games that we have down
here.
But the marvelous thing about our Christian life
is this.
The fact that you win doesn't rob me
of anything.
I can also win.
As a matter of fact, if you win,
you help me to win.
You know, the people that hinder me in
my life, they're the people that are not
going to win.
And the people that are hindering you in
your Christian testimony are men and women that
are not going to win.
They're dawdling.
They're wandering.
They've lost heart.
They've lost the vision or something.
And because of that, they're slowing down.
And they're influencing you, you see.
But the people that are going out to
win, they're the people that influence us.
And you see, God's prize is so big.
It's so large.
It's so infinite.
It's so eternal.
It's so much like himself.
But the fact that you win the prize
doesn't mean to say that I'm robbed of
anything.
On the contrary, there is a sense in
which one without the other cannot obtain the
fullness of the prize.
For we are all one body in our
Lord Jesus Christ and we shall be glorified
together.
Now, what is this prize?
Well, we've indicated already, but let me just
say a word here.
Preaching the gospel to sinners, to unbelievers, we
say, the most wonderful thing in the world
is eternal life.
The gift of eternal life.
Isn't that so?
Sunday school teachers, this is what you tell
your scholars.
I trust.
Men and women who witness on the roadside
or in the bus or wherever, this is
what you tell people.
The most precious thing in this world is
the gift of God, eternal life possessed, because
he gives it to those who receive it.
Here and now, there's nothing to be compared
with it.
Riches, honors, pleasures, there is nothing to compare
with it.
But when the New Testament preaches the gospel
to saints, it equally insists that the least,
the least treasure that a believer has is
eternal life.
Yeah, I haven't made a mistake, that's what
I meant to say.
I see you're a bit stupefied.
The least you've got, believer, is eternal life.
You say, what can be greater than eternal
life?
I'll tell you.
Life in all its vigor.
Eternal life manifesting itself in my body, in
all its fullness, in all its power, in
all its glory, in all its greatness, in
all its dimensions, taking the mind, taking the
intellect, taking the conscience, taking the will, taking
the emotions, taking the members of the body,
taking the time I live, taking my possessions,
mobilizing everything, so that I'm using everything to
the glory of God, and God is glorified
in me.
That's the prize.
It's to hear Him say at last, well
done, good and faithful servant, you enter into
the joys of your Lord.
Now that's a dimension of joy the man
of the world will never know.
The Lord is joyed in you as He
sees you bringing honor and glory to Him,
fulfilling the purpose of your creation and redemption.
Now you come and share the joy of
your Lord.
That's the prize.
There's nothing greater than this.
Let me hurry to the next thing.
If we are aiming at that, then there
is a principle to adopt.
The Revised Standard Version, in translating this verse,
puts it like this, and I rather like
it.
So run that you may obtain.
And it puts all the emphasis on that
little word, so.
The NIV puts it, run in such a
way as to get the prize.
Well, that's all right.
It says what needs to be said, but
I don't think it's as pungent.
So run, says the Revised Standard Version, so
run that you may obtain.
And at any rate, it gets me.
You should run in such a way that
you get the prize.
Now, what kind of running is this running?
This so running that we get the prize.
May I say three things about it very
briefly?
You're allowed to fill in the gaps this
morning.
In the first place, there must be concentration
of effort.
In order to live according to this overriding
goal and motive, there must be concentration of
effort.
You must decide to.
You must will to do it.
And you must continue to will to do
it.
If you just go with the crowd, you'll
not live like this.
You'll not die like this.
If you are more attuned to people than
you are to God and His will, then
you'll not walk this way.
You'll not run this race like this.
To run the race like this, you see,
there has to be concentration of effort.
It will require an act of unqualified dedication
to begin with.
And it will need constant acts of rededication
afterwards.
A Christian who means to fit, to keep
fit spiritually and to keep going spiritually, in
order to achieve the highest glory, will require
no less discipline than a sportsman.
Everything will have to be considered in the
light of this.
Now, go back to the sporting world.
You're a runner or you're whatever.
Doesn't really matter for the moment.
If you're going out for the Olympics, you
look at everything, and this is the test.
Does it help or does it hinder?
What you dress.
Perhaps I shouldn't start there.
You know, there's no harm in wearing an
overcoat in a hundred-yard sprint.
There's no rule against it, I'm told.
And you could go in for a hundred
-yard sprint and have two overcoats on.
You couldn't be disqualified, I don't think.
But it wouldn't be convenient.
And it would be pretty evident that you're
not out to win.
Even down to what you wear, in order
to achieve the end in mind, the end
in view.
What you eat.
What you drink.
When you go to bed and when you
get up.
The company you keep.
The habits you form.
Everything, everything is important.
Nothing is unimportant.
And you weigh them all.
This is the first test.
Do they hinder or do they help?
One first, then the other.
But both must be considered.
And so, all your life is considered in
this one, in the light of this one
issue.
Does it help, does it hinder?
If it helps, right, I must undertake it.
It may be costly.
I may not be used to getting up
in the early hours.
I may want to eat more than is
good for me.
There are many things that perhaps the old
nature in me would love to do or
to have.
But because I mean to win, I must
deny it.
And that's my second point.
Not only must there be concentration of effort,
there must be the crucifixion of the self.
And here's another, here's another area that is
not always easy to face.
But you see, there is still in you
and in me that old nature which longs
to have it easy.
Someone wrote a book in England a few
years ago on the cult of softness.
I gather that someone in the United States
has written a book on this age of
softness.
Are you soft with yourself?
You see, the opposite of that we have
here in the experience of the Apostle Paul.
He says, this is a battle for me.
He moves now from the running, he mixes
his metaphors, and he comes to the boxing
field.
And he says, I'm fighting.
He says, I have to fight with my
body.
My body and its passions, they rage for
attention.
And they want this and they want that.
My bodily desires, not that the body is
wrong, but the body, we are fallen.
And we can't give the body everything it
wants.
The instincts and the emotions can't have everything
they want, when they want it and how
they want it.
Now says Paul, I'm not beating the air.
Now, I don't think anybody misses that metaphor.
Sometimes a boxer in training, of course, is
only shadow boxing, you know, hitting the air.
But he doesn't deal with any foe.
He doesn't climb the ladder by beating the
air.
Now it may be decent exercise for a
boxer.
Go through it a couple of times a
week.
Spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes on each occasion,
fighting the air.
But says Paul, I have to concentrate on
my real enemy.
And my real enemy is the body.
Not that the body is evil, but the
body has become the occasion for sin.
And so he says, I beat it.
Now, he doesn't mean that literally, of course.
But I subject it, and he uses, one
of the translations says, I beat it black
and blue.
What he means is this, I subject my
physical being to my spiritual welfare, and doing
what God has called me to do.
Brothers and sisters, do we know anything of
that?
The crucifixion of the self.
Is there a cross in your experience?
Have you dispensed with a cross in what
you call Christian experience?
The cross was central in the ministry of
our Lord, and the cross is central in
the ministry of the gospel, and the cross
becomes a principle in the experience of the
saint.
And you can't dispense with it without losing
something invaluable on the way.
Concentration of effort, crucifixion of self, and of
course, the completion of the course.
You don't get the prize at the beginning,
the prize is given at the end.
You don't breast the tape at the beginning,
but at the end.
And in order, you see, to win the
prize, we've got to exercise this concentrated effort.
And we must go on like that.
And we must be prepared to count all
things but, Paul says it, done.
Refuse.
For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord, for whom I've suffered the
loss of all things, and count them but
refuse.
Last thing I want to say, just a
word about is, there is a peril to
avoid.
It's a sobering note.
So that after I have preached to others,
I myself will not be disqualified for the
prize.
Disqualified for the prize?
Paul enjoyed a very wholesome certainty concerning his
soul's salvation.
You'll notice that.
He begins to write the great epistle to
the Romans, and he starts off on this
marvelously triumphant note.
I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,
because it is the power of God unto
salvation, right into and unto salvation.
Not a power to reveal that there is
salvation, but it's the power of God that
brings us into it, as well as it
into us, if we may so speak.
It's the power of God that brings us
into the experience of being saved by God.
You move on through the epistle to the
Romans, for example, and over and over again
you have this note of certainty from Paul.
Being justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
we've already received the reconciliation, and he goes
on in chapter 5.
You'll read it.
He's full of this certainty.
Indeed, the classical theme, against the background of
which he expounds the good news, the theme
of justification by grace alone, through faith alone,
involves an act of the judge, whereby he
passes sentence once and for all, and when
the sentence is given, he does not change
it.
God doesn't change his mind.
And when a person is justified, he's justified
for all forever.
You see, God knows all your future when
he deals with you in the past, or
when he dealt with you in the past.
He knew all your future.
And when he justifies a sinner on the
basis of the blood of his son, he
does something that he does not need to
consider again.
It is finished and done with.
So you see, involved in Paul's doctrine of
justification is the assurance that God will not
change his mind.
And when you come to Romans 8, of
course, he's full of the same great certainty
again at the beginning of the chapter, and
at the end of the chapter.
I've no time now to go through it.
Just you read it.
It's music to our souls if we are
yearning for assurance.
You read it there.
But now, my friends, the great apostle Paul
also had an uncertainty about something.
Lest, when I have preached to others, I
myself should be disqualified from the prize.
Now, I find this a missing note in
evangelicalism.
And I believe it is largely because we
are not theologically astute enough to see that
we can have both and.
And we should have both and, as the
apostle did.
There is a certainty that the apostle had
concerning his ultimate salvation.
Nevertheless, he was not sure about winning the
prize.
And it kept him humble.
The kind of assurance that we all too
often have makes us proud, arrogant, priggish sometimes.
But the kind of assurance that Paul had
was, you see, it was balanced by this.
He was uncertain of the prize.
Lest that having preached to others, I myself
be disqualified from the prize.
He kept him humble.
And if I understand my own soul, I
need something to keep me humble.
Don't you?
The great apostle then, sure as he was
of his ultimate destiny by the grace of
God, experienced in his soul this uncertainty of
winning the prize.
Perhaps the fear he expresses here is also
to be understood, or perhaps it's to be
wholly understood, in terms of another usage from
the games.
Paul uses the word keroux for herald.
He used it of himself as a preacher
of the gospel.
There was a keroux in the games.
And his job was to get all the
competitors lined up.
And then he would read the rules and
regulations to them.
And he would tell them all the details,
go through all the rules and regulations, right
at the beginning, so that every competitor knew
when to start, what was the sign, the
off, and so forth.
He needed to know everything before he started.
And the keroux, the herald, told him that.
It wasn't called herald by the Greeks, but
it was called keroux.
They translated it slightly differently from us.
Anyway, what Paul is saying here is this.
Imagine me, he says, the one moment I'm
the keroux, and I've been telling all the
competitors what to do to get on the
race, and how to run the race.
And then he says, I get on the
race myself, and I am disqualified, who's been
telling them all the rules.
And I don't get the prize.
They get the prize, and I don't.
Now, my friends, the New Testament and the
Old Testament has a number of illustrations of
men and women that had to be disqualified
from the prize.
Oh, they were facing in the right direction,
all right.
They were on, to use our New Testament
language, they were on the track.
They were involved in the race, they were
moving in the right way, they were God's
people, they were called, but they did not
get the prize.
You say, who were they?
Well, if I were to start, I'm not
quite sure, I'd probably start with Moses.
The great Moses, you say?
Yes, Moses.
Did you know that Moses was prohibited from
entering the promised land?
Moses?
Moses was a gigantic man.
Moses was the lawgiver.
Yes, yes.
But God had to say to the great
Moses, Moses, he says, I'm not going to
allow you to go into the promised land.
Come up onto Mount Nebo, and you shall
see the land from a distance that I'm
not going to let you go in.
Now, let me give you the Scriptures.
I'm reading from Deuteronomy 32, verses 48 to
52.
I'm just culling out the relevant words.
Because, says God to Moses, you broke faith
with me in the presence of the Israelites
at the waters of Meribah Kadesh, and did
not uphold my holiness among the Israelites.
You will die this side of the land.
Now, Moses did not lose his salvation, but
he lost his prize.
Moses was on the Mount of Transfiguration in
conference with our blessed Lord Jesus and Elijah.
Moses did not lose his salvation, but he
lost something, men and women.
And you and I can lose something too.
And I think of that very sad man
in the Old Testament, Eli, an Old Testament
priest.
And we're told that at certain periods of
his life, he ordered himself magnificently.
But then he had some boys, and he
was too soft with them.
And he allowed them to do things which
desecrated the sanctuary and dishonored his God.
And the Lord said, Eli, your time has
come to an end.
I've got to get someone to take over
from you.
And the boy Samuel was given to his
praying mother, who was incapable of bearing a
child.
And the boy Samuel was sent by God
to take over from the old man, and
he did.
I mean to say his soul was lost,
but he lost something.
Come into the, come later on, you have
the great, the classical illustration, perhaps, of Samson.
You read the story in Judges 16.20.
Dear old Samson lost his eyes, his eyes
gouged out.
He's lost his power.
He's lost almost everything.
And here is the laughing stock of the
Philistines.
Not quite, because his hair began to grow
again, and the Lord had not forsaken him
completely.
And he prayed at the very end of
his life, and God heard his prayer and
answered it.
He lost something.
Certainly he'd lost the opportunity of serving his
God faithfully in this life.
And perhaps even more classical, if that's the
right word, was King Saul, who died because,
I quote from 1 Chronicles chapter 10, he
was unfaithful to the Lord.
He did not keep the word of the
Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance
and did not inquire of the Lord.
So the Lord put him to death and
turned the kingdom over to David son of
Jesse.
You see what's happening?
God says to the man, look man, you've
got to clear out.
You've got to get off the stage.
You're not doing my will.
I'll bring a man onto the stage of
life who will do my will.
You've got to get off.
My friends, there's nothing more terrible than this
for a saint.
If you're not a Christian, then it doesn't
terrify you.
But if you've first known love for God
in your soul and the desire to please
him, this is terrifying.
The apostle says, I press on to take
hold of that for which Christ Jesus took
hold of me.
One thing I do.
Brother, sister, believer, God does not kindly take
to men who rob him of what he's
created and redeemed.
You will lose the prize.
I don't know whether you are familiar, and
with this I close, with the old Jewish
tale of the vulture in the sacrifice.
I don't know whether it's apocryphal, whether it
was true or not, I can't tell you.
But so it goes.
In the days of the Old Testament when
the tabernacle was erected, a vulture was seen
hovering in the sky and down it came.
And lo and behold, where should it go
to but on to the very altar where
a sacrifice was being burnt for the Lord.
And this vulture got its talons right into
the sacrifice.
And after some squawking and squabbling as it
were, it left with a whole chunk of
the meat of the sacrifice between its talons
and its legs.
And it flew up into the sky.
And people watched it of course.
But suddenly something unexpected happened.
They heard an awful squealing and they saw
something dropping and it was the meat dropping
out.
And then suddenly they saw the bird itself
coming down as it were in a dive
-bombing attack upon the earth and died.
People went to see what had happened.
And when they examined it, they discovered that
when it stole the meat from the altar,
a little call was also on the altar.
A little call got lodged in its feathers
under its wing.
And it began to burn and burn and
burn.
And it burned so much, it had to
leave go that which it had stolen and
it lost its life.
You and I stand at the beginning of
this year of grace, 1985.
Brothers and sisters, let us not rob God
of what is His.
Rather let us see the altar of the
cross before us with our eyes closed this
morning and place upon it afresh all that
we are and all that we have and
all that we hope to be and lay
it there and give it over, hand it
over and count it our joy, our honor,
our crown.
So to do and to live that out
by the grace of God through another year.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is
your reasonable service and be not conformed to
this world but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind that you may know, yes,
undo the good and acceptable and perfect will
of God.
Let us pray.
Father in heaven, we bow before your throne
and your word and indeed before the elements
that remind us of the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
And it is in the glare of this
atmosphere and of this background that we look
at ourselves at the beginning of a new
year.
Some of us are very much aware of
the enticements of the flesh and of the
power of Satan.
Maybe others of us are not quite as
aware of it and yet we know that
it is so even when we are not
daily involved in such gigantic trials as some
of our brothers and sisters.
Father, we desire to please you.
It would be our most precious crown to
hear you say to us at last, come
you blessed of my father.
Enter into the joys of your Lord, the
joys prepared from before the foundation of the
world.
Oh God, grant us your grace now in
that you have come into covenant with us.
Help us to respond and to live as
men in covenant with you.
Help us afresh.
Help us anew today to take up the
cross and follow after him who died our
redemption to accomplish, our salvation to procure.
Forgive our sins, have mercy upon us, and
renew in us your grace.