When Robin and I were first called to full-time ministry I used to work with a fellow minister in construction. We were building a two-car garage with an apartment above it. One day while my friend was using a nail gun, he shot a 16-penny nail through his hand. He quickly pulled it out and used my handkerchief to stop the bleeding. We went on working and I told him he could keep the handkerchief - Now, seventeen years later while working at Patt’s, I witnessed John do the same thing. He had cut his finger on a piece of scrap metal. He had Tyler help him tie a piece of handkerchief around the cut and continued working –the job had to get done. Now, both of these guys would tell you that it was nothing and maybe, relatively speaking, they are right. Think of the many soldiers who, though injured, finished their duty and accomplished their mission. Men and women of resolve, committed to the cause of freedom have fought their way through diverse circumstances so the objective could be completed. I think we hold a lot of respect for those who disregard their own personal safety and comfort for the sake of the cause.

There is no one who showed us more tenacity and resolve in His fight for the objective than Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was given no “silver spoon” when He was born. He grew up in poverty and had to work as a carpenter. He had no beauty or majesty and nothing in His appearance that should attract us to Him. When He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, men considered Him stricken and smitten by God. He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed by our iniquities and the punishment that brought us peace was laid upon Him. He often went without sleep for there was no place to lay His head. Jesus was arrested on a Thursday and had undergone the most humiliating night anyone ever experienced at the hand of man. The next morning, His physical tortures were continued and more severe. Someone was forced to carry His cross because His crucifiers thought He was going to die along the way. But He wasn’t going to die along the way. He had an objective and He was committed to that objective. Even while He was on the cross, after all the physical torture and pain that He endured, He was still thinking normal and resolved to complete the objective. Look at what John says, “Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.” What was Jesus’ objective; fulfilling the Scriptures!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” The race that is marked out for us is the same race (objective) that was marked out for Jesus –and that is- fulfilling the Scriptures within our lives.