Run For Fun or Run To Win the Prize?

In several New Testament biblical passages, Paul uses a runner competing as a metaphor for how we as Christians should live.  1 Corinthians 9:24-27 is one of these and is a challenging passage.  ²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. ²⁵ Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. ²⁶ Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. ²⁷ No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

We are going to deal with verse 24 alone today. Paul challenges us in this verse as believers to make a choice.  Are we going to run for fun or we going to run to win the prize?  He states clearly to run to win to win the prize.  “Choice” can be a tough word.  For a Christian to grow, we have to make good choices.  Here is the problem.  When you choose you lose.  You gain something but you lose something.  Maybe what you lose is a habit, maybe it is a change in your normal daily habits, maybe it is a change in your schedule, maybe it is a change in attitude, maybe it is ridding yourself of addiction, maybe it is losing who you hang out with, maybe it is changing your jobs….You lose something.  However, Paul as a good, Godly coach demands us to choose to “run in such a way as to get the prize.”

Paul states this in another way in Philippians 3:13&14 “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Paul made a gigantic choice.  A choice to shed himself from a former way of living and “press on toward to the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Matthew 16:25 puts things in perspective for the believer with a strong, poignant comment… ²⁵ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.   One alternative is comfortable.  The other is eternal.

You have a choice…run for fun or run to win the prize?