Thursday, September 23, 2021

Keep Looking Forward

"Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you."
Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established.
Do not turn to the right hand or the left; remove your foot from evil."
Proverbs 4:25-27 (NKJV)

One thing that I remember from the running sports I was involved in during High School is how the coaches would tell us again and again to keep looking forward and not to turn our heads as we ran.  The reason is that if you turn your head to the side, or you look behind you as you run, that this will slow you down, and you might even trip over something.  I remember once when someone was running a race, and as they turned their head for some reason, another person passed them and finished ahead of them.

There are a lot of things today that can distract us and cause us to lose our focus and look to the side or behind us, so to speak, and cause us to slow down or even get off of the course we are supposed to be on.  Hebrews 12:1 compares the Christian life to a race, and in 2 Timothy 4:7 Paul talked about having finished his race.  We will not run our race for God the way we should if we do not keep looking forward and we allow ourselves to be distracted from doing what God wants us to do.

It seems that anytime some crisis happens in the world, or even when things don't go the way that we planned, that we start looking away from God's Word and the direction that the Holy Spirit is leading us.  If we stop paying attention to what God has said, if we are not focused on the path He has laid out for us, and if we start looking to our right and left in life, it will be hard for us to complete the race God has given to us.  Keep looking forward, no matter what is happening around you, and keep doing the will of God.  That is how we need to run our race for God.

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