"So where does the strength come from to finish the race?" That was a question that Eric Liddell asked of the Scottish coal miners in an impromptu sermon after a race on the track....this from the film Chariots of Fire....which I watched last week for at least....at least the twentieth time in my life. He incorrectly answered his own question...."It comes from within." This is usually interpreted as the faith deep down in you....but the faith itself comes from without....not within!
I....my wife and I....watched that film in the theater on March 5, 1982. I know that because It affected me so that I logged it in my Jim Fixx Runner's Log....and over many years I never logged in anything but the run or how I felt or the weather or a new pair of running shoes.
Eric Liddell's faith was humbling almost beyond measure....but he was not a very good theologian....and C. S. Lewis....as powerful as his apologetic was....was even less of a theologian. Billy Graham....whose face stares at me every day from a coffee table book I have displayed...was also not the best theologian....and his son Franklin....much....much less of one.
Pat Robertson....great televangelist that he was....he more than anyone else watered the seed that God put in me....was a terrible theologian! Charles Finney was an out-and-out heretic....but even Martyn Lloyd-Jones once gave his work a positive comment. Martin Luther had an Achilles Heel that developed later in life.
No denomination is perfect. No Bible translation is perfect....even though the scrolls and parchments were perfect. Not even Joni Eareckson Tada's faith is perfect....and I can't find a more difficult example to use than this wonderful woman!
How about me? Well I'm just about perfect....inversely....but I do think that I did get a few things correct....and those obviously are the things that I post about.
There was a famous NFL football player....this back in the early 1960s....who picked up a fumble and ran it into the wrong end zone. Instead of six points for his team....it was two points for the other team. I've done that many times. I had a friend who in high school grabbed a rebound and put it right back up....into the wrong basket.
That great defender of the faith....John MacArthur....metaphorically did the same thing over the past four years.
Alistair Begg scored a hundred touchdowns....but fumbled the ball once....and was kicked off the team. That is not what we want to do! If it was....then Peter would have gone back to fishing for a living....and Calvin would have retired early....and John Wesley would have given up ministry.
If we are wearing a red football jersey....we would tackle another man in a red jersey if he were running the wrong way with the ball. What we have today in Donald Trump....is a man....who is not wearing the same color jersey that we have on....and we are running along side of him providing blocking! He may indeed get six points....but for the other team!
In the fog of battle we all can become disoriented at times. When I got out of the army at Fort Bragg back in late 1972....I packed up my MGB....with the top down because of all my belongings.....and drove home for twelve hours in the hot sun....(it was a longer drive back then)....and when I came to the Pennsylvania Turnpike....I headed east instead of west....or did I head west and then become disoriented and go east...and then west....and then east again. To this day I don't know if my original direction was correct.
Metaphorically again....there is a great fog in evangelicalism today....over the battlefield. God brought it down upon us because we became too big for our britches....(you may have to look that one up.) He gave us the rod...but He is ready to gently pull us back in with His staff if we but open our ears to the Good Shepherd's call.
Note: It's funny but I never noticed this before....on that March 5, 1982 runner's log entry....I also wrote...."ran in new shoes...(Saucony Jazz)....great feeling." So apparently we went home and I went for a run....and maybe put on more than just new shoes? Today....almost 43 years later to the day....I can only thank God for these precious words from Isaiah chapter 40....in this order....verses 15, 17, 23, 28, 29 and 31....that Eric Liddell....in the movie....preached to a congregation in Scotland....how the power of these words must have affected someone like me!!!!
"Behold, the nations are as a drop in the bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance....All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.....[He} bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity....Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth might....But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint."
