The Olympics - London 2012

1 Corinthians 9:25 And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.

London is currently hosting the Olympic games 2012. Many people are caught up in the excitement of it all. Our athletes have worked very hard to get to where they are - able to compete on the world stage and much money and time has been spent to prepare for this event. We are happy for our athletes when they win their medals and we are proud to see our country's flag held up.
I want to discuss two aspects of this applied to our spiritual life. The first is taking pride in our country and the second is putting effort into our goals.

Taking Pride in your Country - I am happy and thankful to be a Canadian. We are blessed with a good life here - peace, freedom, shelter and plenty of food available. You could say I am proud to be Canadian.  More importantly than that though and what I value more than my Canadian citizenship is the fact that I am a Christian. Phillipians 3:20 says  For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ 

Our Citizenship is HEAVEN! When this life is over and we are gathered together in Heaven, it will not matter if you were a Canadian, or American, or Russian, Chinese or Iranian etc. All that will matter is that Christ Jesus is your Savior.  We will not be in competetion with each other - all of those that are gathered together in Heaven with the Lord are one huge happy family. So my question is - Why as Christians are we shy about wearing our Heavenly colors here? If we take pride in our country and earthly citizenship - should we not be even more bold about representing Christ here on earth? We should be willing to take a stand for Christ, be bold in witnessing, and share the truth of the Gospel even if it means we are frowned upon by the world. Christ is our passion. He is our hope. It is for Christ that we live! One thing that I have admired about the Muslim peoples in our world is that they are not ashamed to wear their religion so everyone can see what they believe. If you are out and about, perhaps shopping - you can clearly see the Muslims carrying their faith with them. We have a local doctor here who is Muslim and she wears her head scarf as she works. The Muslim faith is a false faith and can never bring them to God. It is not that I am embracing their faith, I am only saying they are not ashamed to show it. The fact that we are Christians should stand out. People should be able to see it in how we love, in our values, our focus in life, our choices in education and dress and entertainment. James McDonald has said ( this is not a direct quote)  As Christians, we should not allow ourselves to be entertained by pagans who take the Name of our Lord Jesus in vain and deny His teachings we find in the Bible.

Put Effort into your Goals - Just as our atheletes have spent hours, days, months and years in training and disciplining themselves to prepare for the Olympics London 2012, so also we need to be putting effort and discipline into our Christian life on a daily basis. If as Christians, we say that we are living for Christ, then Christ should have His way in every part of our life. There cannot be any part of our lives that He is not welcome in. He must have authority in our jobs, in our marriage, in our sex life, in our recreational choices, in our finances, etc. The Bible has clear teachings on what the life of a Christian looks like. The questions we must continually be asking oursleves are  - Does this please Christ? Does it bring Glory to Christ? Do I want this for a selfish pleasure or will Christ be honored in it? Is it of this world alone or does it benefit for eternity? Will it help another person?

 If we are focused on the Blessed Hope -(Titus 2:13   looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,)   We wait for Jesus to come at any time, and we know that we will give account for our choices here, and rewards are available to us (for that which we have done for the Lord ) at the judgement seat of Christ. We now have a whole new way of looking at our life that we live here on earth.  We love what God loves and hate what God hates.

Luke 13: 23-25
²³ Then one said to Him, “Lord, are there few who are saved?”
And He said to them, ²⁴ “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵ When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from,’