Liddell: You came to see a race
today. See someone win. Happened to be me. But I want you to do more
than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it.
I want to compare faith to running in
a race. It's hard, requires concentration of will, energy of soul. You
experience elation when the winner breaks the tape -- 'specially if you've
got a bet on it. But how long does that last? You go home. Maybe your
dinner's burnt. Maybe, maybe you haven't got a job. So who am I to say,
"believe," "have faith," in the face of life's realities?
I would like to give you something
more permanent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for
winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way.
And where
does the power come from to see the race to its end?
From within.
Jesus
said, "Behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
"If, with all your hearts
ye truly seek Me, ye shall ever surely find Me"1
-- if you commit yourself to
the love of Christ.
And THAT is how you run the straight race.
1
The three clauses comprising the attribution to
Jesus may have been pieced together from
several different Scriptural verses and
versions (and across both Old and New Testaments), including Luke 17:21
-- "Neither shall they say, Lo here!
or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you"
(KJV); Deuteronomy 4:29 --
"But from there you
will seek the Lord your God and you will
find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your
soul." (ESV); and
Jeremiah 29:13 --
"And ye shall seek
me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
(KJV). The latter two clauses
are found verbatim in Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah, lyrics by
Julius Schubring.
