There are fundamentals in the Christian race as well – basics that perhaps sound no less obvious or any more new and exciting than accelerating and steering on a modern race track. But they are necessary.

Racecar driver Bill Vukovich won the Indianapolis 500 in 1953 and 1954, a record of success few other drivers had matched up to that time. Asked the secret of his success in Indianapolis, Vukovich replied, "There’s no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and steer left."(1)

Of course there is much more involved in being a successful competitive racecar driver. But think about it - none of it would mean anything without the fundamentals of accelerating and steering.

There are fundamentals in the Christian race as well – basics that perhaps sound no less obvious or any more new and exciting than accelerating and steering on a modern race track. But they are necessary.

Referring to the Christian life as a race, the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:24, "Run in such a way that you may win." Using the same figure of a race, the writer of Hebrews said in Hebrews 12:1, "Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…."

I want to talk to you this morning about some of the fundamentals of the Christian race –things that you and I need to be doing regularly if we intend to finish successfully and win. Whether you’re a seasoned saint or a recent beginner, the practice of these fundamentals can mean the difference between success and failure in the race that is the Christian life.

Because the things I’m going to bring up in this message are so basic, some of us may be tempted to tune out. After all, these are the fundamentals. But as easy as they may be to remember, they are also easy to neglect.

We have a list of these printed up on a special salmon colored paper that we give to every person we baptize. Also given is instruction to take them home and put them on the refrigerator or shaving mirror or the mirror on their dresser and keep them there until they have mastered each one. But these aren’t only for new Christians. Here is the first one:

If you are a Christian, you made your initial surrender to Jesus at the beginning when you confessed and accepted Him as your Lord. We all did. The Bible says:

"… If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved…." Romans 10:9

This isn’t an empty confession. The word Lord means "Master" or "Owner." If someone is your "landlord," it means that he owns the place you live in. He has the ultimate control. When you confess Jesus as Lord you’re acknowledging that Jesus owns you and that He is your Master.

Someone has well said, "When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die."(2) That’s what lordship is all about. In our day of easy believism and minimal commitment, that has to be clarified.

You don’t surrender to me. You don’t surrender to the church. You don’t surrender to the elders of this congregation or any other human source. You surrender to Jesus.

Of course, persons surrendered to Jesus will look to these other sources for assistance. They are God’s means for working out the calling of His Lordship as long as they teach the word of Christ. But Christ always comes first.

There can only be one Lord of your life. Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters…."(3) You make the decision that Jesus will be Lord of your life at the beginning of your Christian walk and then you must remain surrendered to Him.

It’s a good practice to start every day telling Him in a prayer that you still willingly give Him first place in your life. Many years ago an older Christian suggested to me that I try to make the earliest moments of each day an acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship. He suggested a prayer that goes something like this: "Lord Jesus, I love you. You are the Master of my life. Help me please, to live out this day doing what You want me to do and not just what I want to do."

The following quote is attributed to Oswald Chambers:

"If in the first waking moment of the day, you learn to fling the door back and let God in, every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God."

If you want to win the race you must remain surrendered to Jesus. Secondly, you must:

When a preacher’s car broke down on a country road, he walked to a nearby tavern to use the phone. After calling for a tow truck, he spotted his old friend Frank, drunk and shabbily dressed at the bar. "What happened to you, Frank?" he asked. "You used to be rich."

Frank told a sad tale of bad investments that had led to his downfall.

"Go home," the preacher said. "Open your Bible at random, stick your finger on the page and there will be God’s answer to your problem."

Some time later, the preacher bumped into Frank again. This time he was wearing an expensive suit, a Rolex watch and had just stepped out of a Mercedes.

"Frank." said the preacher, "I am glad to see things really turned around for you."

"Yes, preacher, and I owe it all to you," said Frank. "I opened my Bible, put my finger down on the page and there was the answer - Chapter 11."

The story is funny and I laughed at it, too. But when a person’s Bible understanding goes no deeper than pointing to and reading an occasional passage, it isn’t very funny at all. And in case you’re wondering, flipping and pointing seldom works.

1 Peter 2:2 says, "…like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation…."

These verses are commonly applied to new Christians. After all, aren’t new believers the "newborn babes" that Peter is talking about? Actually, no. If you look more closely, Peter isn’t saying, "You newborn babes earnestly desire the word of God." He says "Like newborn babes [all of you] long for the pure milk of the word…." In the same way that newborn babies want milk, we Christians should want the word of God. Peter never intended to convey the idea that our hunger for God’s word should be stronger when we’re new than it is later. We need God’s word all the way through our lives. Cultivating a hunger for it is something we must keep doing.

What is your plan for intake of the word of God? Do you have one? Do you have a plan for the rest of your family? Are you providing such intake for your children? How much are you in the Bible? When there is a baby in the house, you put him or her on a regular feeding schedule. That’s what works. And that’s what works best with Bible intake, too.

In John 8:31-32, Jesus said, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." NASU

Perhaps the easiest way to get into the word of God and stay in it is to attend to the teaching of it whenever it is presented - and not just attend, but engage.

Your spirit needs God’s word like your body needs food. The surest way to spiritual malnutrition, sickness, and even death is to not be engaged in learning from God’s word.

As you read and learn from your Bible, it is fitting to praise God for the wonderful qualities you find revealed there about Him. Praise is fitting for a Christian. It returns to God what He rightly deserves and it lifts us out of selfishness and lethargy. One who praises little will find that self is a much larger opponent to true spirituality.

Listen to the Psalmist in the 150^th Psalm:

There is certainly no lethargy in that!

And of course, prayer…

Paul says in Philippians 4:6-7:

Praise and prayer are a part of the fundamentals of a long and faithful race for God. We need to praise and pray ourselves. We need to teach our children to do it as well.

Attending the assembly of God’s people is a requirement of being a Christian. The clearest way for me to make this point is simply to show you in the Bible where it is commanded. Let’s look at it together…

Hebrews 10:23-25 says,

Could it be any clearer? We are not to forsake the assembly. Why? Because God says so? Frankly, yes. A command of God should be sufficient reason for any Christian. Remember what we said about lordship? As a willing servant and subject of Christ, if I ascertain in His word that His wish is for me to do something, then I will do it. To realize it and not do it is to deny His lordship.

Yet in some cases, God has gone beyond "do it because I said so" and revealed some of the reasons behind His commands. This is one such case and I would be remiss if I didn’t point it out. Notice the overall reason for the command to not forsake the assembly: "Let us hold fast to our confession of hope without wavering…." Our assembling together is related to our "holding fast" or hanging onto our hope and not "wavering." There’s a correlation here – a relationship between assembly and continued faith.

It doesn’t take a sociologist with a Ph.D. to understand that there is a direct link between church attendance and continued faithfulness to Christ. People get involved with other things, they begin to drop away more and more from the assembly, and pretty soon they’re back in the world.

One reason then, for regular church attendance is continued adherence our hope. The second reason given in Hebrews is stimulation. "Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds…."

Do you ever come to the assembly intent upon trying to stimulate someone else’s faith? Have you ever considered church attendance from that angle? Maybe you know somebody who has been down and discouraged. What could you do to stir them up? What could you do to encourage that person? What if I asked you right now to take out a piece of paper and write someone’s name on it. Then I asked you not to leave until you had done at least one thing to intentionally stimulate that person’s faith? Could you do it? Would you do it? Have you ever thought of the church assembly that way?

The modern and popular idea that we come to church only to "be fed" like a bunch of farm animals at a trough is kind of anemic against a backdrop like that, isn’t it? We are to attend as participants, not just spectators.

It’s an old illustration, but still true. If you go to the fireplace when the coals have burned down to a low glow and remove one of them from the others and place it on the hearth by itself, it will very soon grow cold. Leave it in with the others and it will continue to glow. The coals "stimulate" one another.

Even Smoky Bear, when he gives out instructions for putting out a fire, tells us first to douse it with water. Then he tells us to scatter the coals. Even a dumb bear knows that when coals are scattered, the fire goes out. J

All of us repented of sin when we were converted. But we soon learned that our intentions don’t always match reality. We still sin, though that is not our desire or intent.

So how do we deal with it? Do we just ignore it? Do we think or say, "Oh well, no one’s perfect," and then move on without any further thought or action?

There are primarily two verses in the New Testament that tell us how to deal with sin. The first is in 1 John 1:8-9. Writing to Christians, John said,

After acknowledging that we will still sometimes sin, John tells us clearly what we are to do about it. We are to confess. John used a term (homologeo) that means, "to speak the same word." What we’re doing when we confess sin to God is that we are saying the same thing about our sin that He does. We’re agreeing that what we have done is wrong and it has no place in our lives.

Our sin may be caused by a momentary deception. It may be caused by inattention. It may be that we are momentarily overwhelmed such that we give in. Whatever the cause, sin always rattles the mind that is set on Christ. It shakes up the order of our thinking. In the aftermath, as soon as we have come to our senses, we need to return our mind to the proper order. That’s what confession does. It shakes out the disorder that sin brings. It returns us to truth and to right thinking. It reiterates the truth that sin is to have no permanent place in our lives. If we don’t confess our sin we soon grow accustomed to this rattled thinking. This can lead to a condition where we see nothing wrong with sinning. It doesn’t upset us anymore.

The second passage that tells Christians how to deal scripturally with sin is Acts 8:22. There we find the story of Simon the Sorcerer who offered Peter money so that he could gain the powers of the Holy Spirit for himself. Peter said it was a wicked request. It was sin. Then he told Simon what he needed to do to get right: "Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you."

Repent and pray for forgiveness. That’s what the Apostle told Simon to do. Repent means to change your mind. We need to change our mind about what we’ve done and confess that it is wrong. Then we need to pray to ask God to forgive us.

We cannot allow sin to stay in our lives so that it takes root there. We must deal with it daily – or even more frequently when we become aware of it.

By "the Lord’s Table," I mean communion – the Lord’s Supper. It is called communion because it is a time of sharing. In it we share symbolically in the body and blood of Christ. We remember the tremendous price that was paid for our redemption. We do that tough self-examination that we would probably ignore or neglect if it were not scheduled by an appointment to which we have an invitation to "Do this in remembrance of me."

Communion brings us back again to the basics of our faith, that is:

Paul made it very clear in 1 Corinthians 11:30 what neglect of or misapplication of the Lord’s Supper does to Christians. He said, "For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep."

Our weekly communion here in this congregation is intentional. I don’t have time to explain that in detail here. I have done it at other times. Let me simply say that we are convinced that weekly communion was the practice of the early church, when it was under the direction of living Apostles. It was to be practiced regularly, seriously, and correctly. If you haven’t come to understand fully what it is about, I suggest you begin by studying 1 Corinthians 11. We can also provide you with several printed lessons on the subject. Just request them from the church office.

We’re out of time but let me simply say that if you are on your way to heaven today it is because someone, another human being, took the time and cared enough about your soul to teach you the gospel. Imagine where you would be headed had that not happened.

Now that you have heard, you must realize that many others haven’t heard – at least in a way that they can understand. You could be their hope of hearing about Jesus.

Let me leave you with the following challenging quote:

"I would recommend you either believe God up to the hilt, or else not to believe at all. Believe this book of God, every letter of it, or else reject it. There is no logical standing place between the two. Be satisfied with nothing less than a faith that swims in the deeps of divine revelation; a faith that paddles about the edge of the water is poor faith at best. It is little better than a dry-land faith, and is not good for much at all."(4)

Footnotes: Use your "back" button to return to you place.

1. Today in the Word, February 17, 1993
2. Addison Leitch, quoted in Passion and Purity, Elizabeth Elliot, Revell, 1984, p. 72
3. Matthew 6:24
4. C.H. Spurgeon

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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