I don’t often remember dreams but I woke up recently remembering one in great detail.  I was running a race through a town and just before the last lap I was encouraged to work harder and give everything I had.  I remember picking up the pace only to find that there were people staged all over the course to cause me problems.  I became very frustrated because every time I started to pick up speed the obstacles purposely forced me to slow back down.  By the end of the race I had gotten so consumed from all the sights and sounds and obstacles that I totally forgot that I was running a race.  Then I woke up. 

Runners that train hard with their eyes fixed on the goal will have great success.  Runners that lose focus while training will never reach their true potential.  It doesn’t matter how hard they were training at first if they lose track of what they are training for and stop working hard before race day.  How can a runner run with passion if he doesn’t know what he is running for?  How can a runner reach a goal that he has never set?  If a runner wants to perform to the best of their ability they must aim for the sky and reach past where they currently reside.   If a runner lives in the present he is already beaten.  He must train with the end in mind.  He must live every minute of every day for the future if he wants to receive his prize.

If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God you were not made for here.  Yet so often we easily get caught up with what is happening here and what the world has to offer.  The world offers so many distractions that try to steal our attention.  And what is at the center of most every distraction?  Pleasure.  If we don’t know God we run after things that stimulate our senses.  If we don’t know God our joy and our happiness comes from what we can see, what we can experience, what we can touch, and what we can taste.  How easily we can drift from finding our happiness in God to trying to find our happiness in the fleeting pleasures of this life.  The only way for us to successfully navigate through the race and all its distractions is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and the prize that awaits those that follow Him, eternal life.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,  treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

Two days before my dream I was sent a message online.  The message I received informed me that I was false teacher of Jesus Christ.  Of course, I was devastated by the accusation.  How could I not be?  The reason I live and the reason I get up is because of what I have in Him.  He is the center of my life.  He makes me who I am. 

Over the next several hours after receiving the message my mind was consumed with the words this person had said.  I felt a great weight of worry resting on my shoulders.  I had trouble understanding what they were saying in the message and I wasn’t sure what the truth was.  I began to doubt myself.  I began to doubt my ministry.  I was struggling pretty badly.

Before going to bed that night I prayed to God for clarity and understanding.  I prayed that He show me the truth.  He answered.  I woke up the next morning feeling very light.  I instantly knew there was no truth in the accusations and I knew I was walking in that truth.  I wrote a message back to this person and the words flowed from my fingers with ease.  I knew what I had to do.  I had to press on and keep working hard for God no matter what obstacle I faced and no matter what anyone said to me. 

A few hours after sending my response message I received another message from someone that I know is deeply in love with our Lord.  This message said exactly what I was feeling at that moment.  The message was simply, ‘Keep shining your light.’  I thanked this person and I thanked God for His encouragement and His reassurance of the work I had been doing.  I was at peace.  That very night I received my dream.  What was the message that God wanted me to understand in the dream?  Things in this life will try to trip me up and slow me down.  But I must keep focused on God and keep running as fast as I can go.  Time is almost up.  I must keep shining my light all the way to the finish line.

Could there be anything more exciting than a true follower crossing the finish line and standing face to face with their creator?  Whether we prepare or not that day is coming for everyone.  The finish line is fast approaching.  But unlike a runner, we don’t train before our race.  The race is our training.  It readies us and prepares us to stand in God’s presence.

Right now you are in a race that determines eternal life.  None of us know how many laps we have left before the finish line so we should give everything we have on every one.  Every step that we take and every breath that we breathe should be done in a way to help propel us towards that final destination.  We must run with purpose and passion.

There will be many obstacles during our race.  They come in all shapes and sizes and often times come when we are running our hardest.  When we love on people satan will be after us.  When God is changing hearts through our work we will have a target on our backs.  The only way to survive the attacks is to keep our eyes on the prize.  The only way to not get caught up in this world is to have our focus elsewhere.  We must look past where we currently reside and reach for heavenly places.  We must always run with the end in mind.  We must always be looking up.

Come quickly Lord Jesus!             
 
 
                

Days after the death of my first wife Kari, I felt I wanted to die.  I still remember standing on that country road with the rain pouring down on me as I looked into the heavens above.  “God please take me from here.”  My tears mixed with the rain as I asked God over and over again to take me out of the world.  All my dreams had Kari written into them.  At that time in my life, living without her was a life without hope and dreams and a life without hopes and dreams was not worth living to me.  As hard as that summer was, God did not intended for that to be the death of me.  He intended it to give me life.   

I struggled with why God allowed me to live for several weeks after her accident.  I felt Kari was the better person, the better parent, and the better Christian.  I asked God over and over again why she died and not me?  Why was I still here?  As I walked through the grief valley it became perfectly clear why I was still alive.  God was not done with me yet.  He had an assignment for me.    
     
God is always watching.  His angels are always standing by.  Despite some close calls I have never been in a serious accident.  I could have very easily died in 2006 just a few weeks before Kari did.  When we bought our property in 2006 we also made a deal with the owner for his farm tractor.  He told us the brakes were not good when we bought it but I drove it into the woods anyway.  I was coming down a steep hill mowing the trails in the woods when the brakes began to fail.  The tractor was approaching a very large drop off and my stomach felt like it was dangling in my feet.  But somehow, someway the tractor suddenly stopped at the exact moment it had to.  A few more feet and, well….

Last summer I was driving down the interstate in the rain when my tires hit a giant puddle of water in the road and my car began to hydroplane.  While my car was sliding I noticed another car that had left the road directly in the path of my out of control car.  The seconds seemed like minutes as I watched a man outside of his car standing right next to the road.  I prayed over and over again, “God please help me!  God please help me!”  Just feet before sure death for him and possibly for me, my car stopped sliding and turned away from the accident like it was pushed by a hand.

Last winter I was driving into work during a snowstorm.  The road was completely covered and the three lanes of traffic had been reduced to one slow moving bobsled track.  Just ahead of me I noticed a car that had recently slid off the road.  No sooner than I saw the wrecked car with its flashers on, my car began to slide directly toward its location.  I cried out to God as my car slid and just like what had happened in the rain, my car suddenly changed directions just feet before impact. 

A week before Christmas we celebrated the holiday with family several miles from our house.  I was going to be late because I had to stay in town to pick up my son from basketball practice so my wife and I drove separately to the party.  After the party we were driving home when freezing rain began to come down.  It didn’t take long before the roads became extremely hazardous.  My wife was ahead of me when I noticed her car was slowing down as it climbed a large hill.  Knowing I couldn’t stop on the ice covered hill and restart; I began to go around her.  By the time my car was even with hers, my tires began to spin.  Her car stopped but I stayed on the gas enough to get 50 feet or so in front of her but then I could go no further and I stopped.

As I nervously assessed the situation I noticed my wife’s car was close to a large drop off.   If she was to slide a few feet off the road she and our kids she was hauling would be in big trouble.  As for myself, I was now in the wrong lane almost at the crest of a large icy hill.  I had to do something quick.  I tried to turn the car around but my car began to slide right for my wife’s car.  I felt extremely helpless as we braced for impact.  But like something out of a movie, my car switched directions feet before impact.  Just as surreal we both managed to get down that large ice covered hill, sliding all the while, without any incident.

I don’t know for how long but today I live on.  My assignment must not yet be complete.  If you are alive today God has a plan and a reason for it.  If you die tomorrow God has a plan a reason for it.  If my wife Kari would have died a slow death from sickness she might have asked the questions, “Why God?  Why now?  Why me?”  If she had asked me those same questions I wouldn’t have had the answers.  I probably would have been asking the same ones myself.  While I can’t completely answer those questions even now, I am able to see how God turned something so painful and sad, into something so very beautiful. 

I know Kari prayed a lot for me to change.  Not that I was a bad person but she knew I hadn’t completely given my heart to God.  God answered her prayers, but it was probably not in a way most would expect a loving God to answer.  Had I not experienced the heartache and pain of losing her, I am not sure I would have ever changed.  To be honest, I feel her death gave me life.  And as I think about the sacrifice she unknowingly made to give me that life I know with all my heart she would have chosen that fate if given the choice because her heart had been transformed by Jesus.  She had already given her life away. 

Our God given instincts tell us to run from pain but its pain that causes us change.  When I called out to God through the rain in the days following Kari’s death, I desperately wanted to escape the pain I was feeling.  I was very, very uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable in fact that I wanted to physically die.  I didn’t realize at the time but spiritually, I did die.  The old me died when I found Kari unconscious.

If you are being tested right now God has His reasons.  If you are struggling right now you are not alone.  If you don’t understand why God is allowing you to feel intense heartache and pain I have been where you are.  Behind the scenes, most likely beyond our understanding, God is working in your life.  You may feel intense pain or you may have an incurable sickness, but beautiful flowers will follow the rain.  You are a beautiful person and if God can make such beauty from non-living dust, imagine the beautiful everlasting impact He will make through your life. 

Romans 8:18 “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”