{"id":1535,"date":"2016-05-05T15:29:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T20:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/?p=1535"},"modified":"2016-05-05T15:29:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T20:29:06","slug":"runners-to-your-marks-get-set-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/2016\/05\/05\/runners-to-your-marks-get-set-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Runners, To Your Marks; Get Set; Go!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>\u201cTherefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.\u201d 1 Peter 1:13<\/p>\n<p>Think about this verse as a daily exercise: Every day, begin by preparing your minds for action. Then throughout the day, be completely sober-minded. This enables you, thirdly, to set your hope fully on the future grace we will receive when Jesus returns.<\/p>\n<p>Before we elaborate on each step, think over this analogy:<\/p>\n<p>Consider each day of living the Christian life as a 400 meter run. Prior to being called to the start, you need to make sure you\u2019re dressed in running clothes. Your shoes must be tied. Your spikes must be tightened. Then, crouched in the blocks before the race starts, you must prepare your mind for action: You have to get ready to make an extreme effort. You must put aside all other thoughts, all distractions. You must focus on the starter, ready to explode as soon as the gun sounds.<\/p>\n<p>Then, throughout the race, you must be \u201csober-minded.\u201d That is, you must maintain your focus on running well, even as your body screams out that the sprint is too painful. You must relax your shoulders and your jaw, while maintaining your knee lift and efficient form.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, you set your hope on the coming, certain end. The race will seem interminable. The finish line may appear to recede instead of drawing closer. Your legs may feel like lead. But the end is certain. The race will end, and its end will be glorious.<\/p>\n<p><i>Prepare Your Mind for Action<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The King James Version translates this phrase literally, \u201cGird up the loins of your minds.\u201d In Peter\u2019s day, men normally wore robes or tunics that draped down to their ankles. Imagine trying to run in such clothing! So any time a man had to move quickly, or to engage in difficult labor, he would tie up the robe around his waist. In this way he prepared himself for action.<\/p>\n<p>Similar ideas occur several times in the Old Testament. For example, God tells the Israelites to eat the Passover \u201cwith your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand\u201d (Exodus 12:11). They are to be ready to move the minute God gives the command.<\/p>\n<p>How do we fulfill this on a day to day basis? How do we prepare ourselves, so we are ready for whatever action God has in store for us?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We must remind ourselves of the truths of the Gospel, of the promises of God, of His character, of the work of Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit\u2019s presence.<\/li>\n<li>We must reflect on how we failed in the fight of faith yesterday, and determine how to depend on God to fight that fight today.<\/li>\n<li>We must pray for ourselves, and pray for others, confident that brothers and sisters are praying for us.<\/li>\n<li>We must go to the Word, seeking the Spirit\u2019s insight and encouragement, picking out what we will meditate, learn from, and put into practice this day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i>Be Completely Sober-Minded <\/i><\/p>\n<p>Having been prepared, we must run today\u2019s race. We must maintain a constant vigilance against the distractions that come our way continually.<\/p>\n<p>Satan sometimes tempts us directly to doubt God\u2019s goodness, to doubt His power, and to doubt our status before Him.\u00a0 Other times he instead tries to distract us from the task, encouraging us to think of other aspects of life \u2013 our jobs, our families, our health, our safety, our entertainment, our education \u2013 as more important, more vital, more urgent than Jesus and His Kingdom. One way or another, he tries to envelope us in a fog on unbelief, in which the truths of God seem unreal, immaterial, and unimportant. In that fog, we effectively are drunk, not sober; we\u2019re not thinking clearly about Who God is; we\u2019re not trusting His revelation of the nature of Reality.<\/p>\n<p>So we must maintain our sobriety. We must be completely sober-minded.<\/p>\n<p><i>Set Your Hope Fully on the Grace That Will Be Brought to You at the Revelation of Jesus Christ<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Note that Peter tells us to set our hope on <i>future <\/i>grace. God has given us great grace already if we are in Christ. We are to reflect on that in preparing our minds for action, and hold on firmly to that truth by being sober-minded. But we are to set our hope fully on the future grace that will be ours when Jesus returns, when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15).<\/p>\n<p>What grace will we receive in that day? Peter has already mentioned some aspects of this grace:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1 Peter 1:4: An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, protected in heaven for us<\/li>\n<li>1 Peter 1:5: The completion of our salvation, which is ready for us, and will be revealed to us in the last time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>From other Scriptures we know: We will know fully, even as we are fully known. We will see Him face to face. He will rejoice over us with loud singing. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. We will receive incorruptible, sinless, eternal bodies. The entire creation will be made new. There will be no more sin, no more sorrow, no more pain. God Himself will be our light.<\/p>\n<p>The glory of the finish line helps the 400 meter runner to endure. Just so, the glories of Jesus\u2019 return help us. But Peter hints that we have another reason to hope in the midst of trials.<\/p>\n<p>Literally, Peter says, \u201cSet your hope fully on the grace <i>that is being brought to you<\/i>.\u201d That is, the participle Peter uses is in the present tense, not the future. What\u2019s the difference, since Jesus\u2019 return is obviously future?<\/p>\n<p>Had the tense been future, Peter\u2019s emphasis would have been solely on the grace that will be ours on that great day. By using the present tense, Peter emphasizes, in addition, that <i>right now all you experience is bringing about the culmination of God\u2019s Plan. <\/i>All your pain, all your sorrow, all your difficulties and trials work to bring about this coming grace, this return of Jesus \u2013 and with Him, your inheritance of all things.<\/p>\n<p>This is our hope. Day by day, throughout every day, remind yourself: Right now, God is working through all that happens to bring about that Final Day, with its great outpouring of grace.<\/p>\n<p><i>The Foundation for Peter\u2019s Commands<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Consider finally some of the exhortations and commands Peter gives in the remainder of this letter. All are grounded in 1 Peter 1:13:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Be holy in all your conduct<\/li>\n<li>Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which includes putting away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander<\/li>\n<li>Long for the spiritual milk of the Word<\/li>\n<li>Love one another earnestly, having unity of mind<\/li>\n<li>Be subject to authority: everyone to governments, wives to husbands, servants to masters, the younger to elders<\/li>\n<li>Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding manner<\/li>\n<li>Elders, shepherd the flock eagerly, willingly, setting an example<\/li>\n<li>Proclaim the excellencies of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light<\/li>\n<li>Be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you<\/li>\n<li>In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy<\/li>\n<li>Live for the will of God<\/li>\n<li>Show hospitality without grumbling<\/li>\n<li>Use your gifts to serve one another to God\u2019s glory<\/li>\n<li>Rejoice as you share Christ\u2019s sufferings<\/li>\n<li>Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another<\/li>\n<li>Cast your anxieties on God<\/li>\n<li>Resist the devil<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>So, my friends, today and every day: Prepare your minds for action! Gird up that long robe! Get ready to run! Listen for His command! Be like the Israelites at Passover, all ready to head out at God\u2019s command.<\/p>\n<p>Keep being sober minded. Prepare your minds so that you can avoid the fog of unbelief and maintain your focus.<\/p>\n<p>Hold to the solid hope that even now God is working all things together to bring about that Final Day, when every tribe and tongue will praise the Name of Jesus, when He will wipe all tears from our eyes, when we will see Him face to face.<\/p>\n<p>So: Runners, to your marks. Get set. Go!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cTherefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.\u201d 1 Peter&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15,25],"tags":[36,579,605,743,830,1277,1383,1474],"class_list":["post-1535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-devotions","category-the-race-of-faith","tag-1-peter-113","tag-future-grace","tag-gird-up-the-loins","tag-hope","tag-jesus-return","tag-race-of-faith","tag-running","tag-sober"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}