Paul's 'St. Crispin's Day' Speech

2 Timothy 3-4

In this passage, Paul exhorts a weary band of brothers and sisters to fight the good fight and finish strong. I was thinking of this yesterday and remembered the images of the Iron Man race where runners pushed themselves so hard that they literally had to crawl across the finish line. As they cross they are greeted by their friends, family, doctors and media. There is at once the knowledge that 'it is finished' and also, I have done well. And that is what we desire, on the deepest level to know, that God sees us crawling across the finish line and grasps us under the arms saying, you are my son/daughter and I am deeply pleased with you. That is a wonderful vision and a destiny to pursue wholeheartedly, but an even better analogy might be these guys, Rick and Dick Hoyt. As it turns out, our role in the race of life is sometimes less about running and more about being carried along by the grace of God. Anyway, the dichotomy between these two images, where one represents us as the runner, and the other with God as the runner, really is dealt with in James. We must run with all of our might, and God will take care of the rest.

Faith Like Jesus

Matthew 17:14 And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, 15 said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” 17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, [15] and it [16] came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. [17] 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” [18]
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I wonder if Jesus' faith was related to his righteousness. Faith seems to me to be related to what one knows. Righteousness is related to what one does. The two are of course inseperable, faith and works, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, right thinking and right action. The temptation with this passage is of course to convince ourselves that a mere mustering of the thought of the mountain in motion might be enough. Jesus lived a sinless life. I think there is power in that. I am not saying that his grace isn't great enough to make our faith powerful, but it seems reasonable to me that God would be more willing to work with people who were doing the stuff of Christ on a regular basis. So goal #1 is to walk in his footsteps and not become legalistic. Then, believing and obeying, we should ask for the great big things that would bless God.