[I was privileged to give this message at an English/Chinese church while teaching in China. I have left tis context in place. It was given on June 8, 2014.]
Psalm 119:32 (NKJV)
I will run
the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart.
California
Chrome is a racehorse that set the thoroughbred horse-racing world on fire this
year. The story of this horse will
inevitably be made into a movie.
California Chrome – with the running of New York’s Belmont Stakes in
early June (2014) – failed in his attempt at the Triple Crown. So, the trophy will be packed away for a
future hope and a future horse.
Having
lived for three years in the state of Kentucky, we were exposed to the verdant,
gated communities of thoroughbred race horses.
The manicured farms set against the rolling hills of Kentucky stand out
for their immaculate white fences and majestic animals. In 2010, a movie emerged about one of those
horses.
If
you don’t know the background, Secretariat (also known as Big Red) was a large horse that is thought by
many to be the greatest race-horse to ever live. In 1973, the summer Debbie and I were
married, Secretariat won what is called the Triple-Crown of thoroughbred
racing: The Kentucky Derby, The
Preakness Stakes, and The Belmont Stakes.
Secretariat
was the ninth horse to win the Triple Crown.
At the time Secretariat won the Triple Crown, it hadn’t been done for 25
years! Since Secretariat’s win, two other
horses have won the Triple-Crown: Seattle
Slew in 1977, and Affirmed in 1978.
We’ve been waiting forty-one years for another winner!
In
The Kentucky Derby, Secretariat ran each quarter-mile segment
faster than the one before it. The successive quarter-mile times were 25 1/5,
24, 23 4/5, 23 2/5, and 23. This means he was still accelerating as of the
final quarter-mile of the race!
After
winning the Kentucky Derby (1 1/4 mile), and The Preakness, many felt that he would lose in The Belmont since it was 1 1/2 mile.
Only
five horses ran The Belmont Stakes that year.
Three were considered non-contenders.
Secretariat was favored, but some still wondered if Sham might win this
longer race; Sham had finished second at
The Kentucky Derby and at The Preakness Stakes.
Secretariat
was noted for pressing against the back of the gate at the start of a
race. Consequently, he was noted for
being the last horse out of the gate.
Nearly every race he ran was a come from last place to win! He was a very exciting horse to watch!
However,
at The Belmont Stakes, he and Sham took the lead together and ran side-by-side
– a sixteenth of a mile ahead of the other three horses. After running for three quarters of a mile,
Sham began to tire – dropping back to eventually finish last. Secretariat astonished
spectators by continuing the fast pace and opening up a larger and larger
margin on the field. Viewers heard the wonder in CBS Television announcer Chic Anderson's voice as he
described the horse's pace: "Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!"
In the stretch, Secretariat opened a 1/16 mile lead on
the rest of the field. At the finish, he won by 31 lengths (breaking the
margin-of-victory record set by Triple Crown winner Count Fleet,
who won by 25 lengths) and ran the fastest 1½ miles on dirt in history, 2:24
flat, which broke the stakes record by more than 2 seconds. This works out to a
speed of 37.5 mph for his entire performance. Secretariat's world record
still stands, and in fact, no other horse has ever broken 2:25 for 1½ miles on
dirt.
Earlier, I read Psalm 119:32, “I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my
heart.”
When we cooperate with God, He grows our heart! [You might want to read that verse and comment
again]
I have certainly experienced this to be true and I’ll bet
most of you have, too.
After leading churches for many years, I read some books
that revealed God’s heart to me more clearly than I had ever seen it
before. I began to experience God’s
passion for lost people throughout the world.
The Holy Spirit continually stirred my heart and I grew
increasingly discontent doing what I was doing.
I felt compelled to leave my comfort zone and do something that most
people would consider radical.
The door opened for us to come to China for a year. That first year turned into a second
year; and now the second year has led to
a third year. When we came, we had no
special passion for China. To be
painfully honest, we knew very little about China – its history, its culture, or
its people!
However, as a result of our obedience to God’s challenge
to leave our comfort zone and reach out to the lost – God has grown our hearts
for China! Consequently, we’re having
difficulty leaving and returning to our former lives!
In Acts 13:22 (NASB), we read: “After [God] …removed [King Saul], He
raised up David to be their king, concerning whom He also testified and said, ‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My
will.’
It seems clear that having a heart after God includes
being willing to do His will!
This may be the biggest issue for many Christ-followers
today. It involves ignoring our own
desires to prioritize God’s desires. It
means subordinating my will to His will!
It means saying: “Not my will, but Your will be done!”
God is searching for men and women who love Him supremely! People who love Him more than
themselves. People who want what He
wants. People who are willing to live in
temporary dwellings, who are willing to leave their homeland, who are willing
to endure hardships.
But God doesn’t expect people to do this unrewarded. He has promised a great reward to those who
will make His priorities their priorities!
These rewards are VERY exciting!
They will be VERY real. These rewards will be given in Heaven after all its inhabitants have arrived! At that moment we will be truly glad that we made the
sacrifices we are making. We will live
for all eternity with a sense of gratitude that we used our time on this earth
wisely.
But how does one come to a place in his/her life where
they are willing to live this way. What
makes a person commit his/her life so deeply to an unseen God?
What else but a deep conviction that God is real and the
truths of His Word are compelling!
Of course, we must realize that many Christians never
really mature in their faith and never really study His Word. They live for themselves and give homage to
some of the principles of God’s Word.
Yet they fall far short of the expectations God has for His
children.
God yearns for His children to be consumed with a passion
for the lost. He hopes to see their
hearts grow through exposure to His own heart!
He expects to see people act on the things that are most important to
Him! That one thing always has been and
ever shall be those who are spiritually lost!
Whether reaching across the street, across the aisle,
across town, across the country, or across the world – God desires and expects
us to reach out intentionally to the lost!
When we’re doing so, we are pleasing to Him! When we’re not doing so we will experience
His nudging to move toward the lost – either in our sphere of influence or
around the world.
The call is the same for all: Go into
all the world and make disciples of all nations…
Those who join God in this will have their hearts
grown! God’s love will multiply in their
hearts as they reach out with the message of hope. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost! As the Father sent Him, now He has sent
us!
David Platt writes:
“The
stakes in this spiritual battle are eternal.
There is a true God over this world who desires all peoples to
experience everlasting joy in heaven.
And there is a false god in this world who desires all people to
experience everlasting suffering in hell.”
I wholeheartedly believe that those who deny their
personal desires and deliberately press into the harvest will find that their
hearts will grow. They will discover an
ever-deepening satisfaction that results from the affirmation of God! Seeing lost people turn, with interest,
toward Christ is a most rewarding moment!
Seeing them embrace Christ and change their lives ignites the deepest
kind of joy!
Those who accept the challenge of the Great Commission
will do what they do less and less out of obedience and more and more out of
love! As their hearts grow, their love
for the lost will also grow! Their grip
on the things of this world will loosen and their grasp of the rewards of the
next world will become a growing hope!
If we go. If we
go, then we - like the Grinch - will find that our hearts have expanded and a
new love has been born in us that will forever motivate us to prioritize the
priorities of our God!
Remember
Secretariat?
There is something in thoroughbred horses that they refer
to as the x-factor. It essentially means
that the horse has an exceptionally large heart. It’s traced back to a horse named Eclipse,
whose body was studied in 1789. His
heart was found to weigh 14 pounds – which is twice the normal weight of a
horse’s heart.
They have found that this trait can only be passed down
through the daughters of the horse. It
was later discovered that Secretariat traced through his dame line to a
daughter of Eclipse. At the time of
Sham’s death, his heart was found to weigh 18 pounds! At the time of Secretariat’s death, his heart
was estimated to weigh 22 pounds;
two-and-a-half times that of a normal horse!
It can literally be said that this great racehorse had a
huge heart!
Listen! I
don’t know about you. And I can’t speak
for you. But I can tell you this from
me: I want to run this race like
Secretariat! I want every quarter to be
faster and better than the last! I want
to get better and more effective with each quarter-mile! I don’t want to lose passion. I don’t want to run out of steam. I don’t want to slow down. I don’t want to wear out or burn out or fall
out or fake out or die out. I want to
progressively become more and more given over to the purposes of God.
I
want to grow my heart for God, and grow my heart for God, and grow my heart for
God until that heart enables me to run the longest race and endure the most
challenging of situations without denying Him or failing Him. I want to finish like Paul, saying: “I have
fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith…” I don’t want to do this for honor’s sake
or for legacy’s sake, or for my family’s sake;
I want to do it as a lifelong act of love and obedience to my Master and
my Lord!
When I stand at the
judgment seat of Christ
And He shows me His plan
for me
The plan of my life as it
might have been
Had He had His way, and I
see
How I blocked Him here and
I checked Him there
And I would not yield my
will,
Shall I see grief in my
Savior’s eyes,
Grief though I love Him
still?
He would have me rich, and
I stand there poor,
Stripped of all but His
grace,
While memory runs like a
hunted thing
Down the paths I can’t
retrace.
Then my desolate heart
will well nigh break
With tears that I cannot
shed.
I will cover my face with
my empty hands
And bow my uncrowned head.
Lord, of the years that
are left to me
I yield them to Thy hand.
Take me, mold me, make me,
To the pattern Thou hast
planned.
– anonymous
[Love That Lasts,
Jill Briscoe, p.152]
