Game Plan | Part 3

Jesus. Jesus. No other name. No other name. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Over every heart and every mind. Cause I know there is peace within your presence. I speak Jesus. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Till every dark addiction starts to break. Declaring there is hope and there is freedom. I speak Jesus. Cause your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is love. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Hope and fear and all anxiety. Till every soul held captive by depression. I speak Jesus. Cause your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is love. Your name is power. I know you can do it God. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name. Your name. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is love.

Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Shout Jesus from the mountains. In the darkness over every enemy. I'm speaking Jesus for my family. I speak the holy name of Jesus. Shout Jesus from the mountains. Jesus in the streets. Jesus in the darkness over every enemy. Jesus for my family. I believe it. I speak the holy name of Jesus. Your name. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is love. Your name is power. Your name is power. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. A holy cross on the inside. Your name is power. It's healing.

Your name is love. Your name is power. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Yeah! Shout it out. Come on, feel me say it. Shout Jesus from the mountains. Can I hear you call me. Jesus in the streets. Call me. Jesus in the darkness over every enemy. Jesus for your family. For my family. I speak the holy name of Jesus. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Come on, can you lift up the King of Glory in this place? Hallelujah! Who is the King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your hands. O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors. And the King of Glory shall come in. He's here. You're here, you're here. You're here, you're here. Cause your name is power.

Your name is healing. Your name is light. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Can we sing it one more time? Cause your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is light. I know he can do it. Break, break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Hallelujah! Father, we are so grateful. We are nothing without your presence. When I look back over my life and I think things over, you've been better than good to me. And you're still good. All my words fall short. I've got nothing new. How could I express all my gratitude? I could sing songs as I often do. But every song will stay. And you never do. Come on, let's do it family. So I throw my hands and praise you again and again. Cause all that I have is a hallelujah. Hallelujah! I know it's not much. I've nothing else before me.

Except for a heart singing hallelujah. Hallelujah! I've got no scars. I've got just one thing. With my arms stretched wide, I will worship you. So I throw my hands and praise you again and again. Cause all that I have is a hallelujah. Hallelujah! I know it's not much. I've nothing else before me. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. Hallelujah! Come on, come on, come on You can bless them all, my soul Come on, come on, come on You can worship all, my soul Come on, come on, come on Come on, come on, come on Come on, my soul Oh, don't you get shy of me Lift up your song Cause you've got a lion in me Hey! The lion of Judah's on the inside Let the lion roar Come on, my soul Oh, don't you get shy of me Lift up your song Cause you've got a lion inside those lungs Get up and praise the Lord Get up, get up, get up Wake up, wake up now Come on, my soul Oh, don't you get shy of me Lift up your song Cause you've got a lion inside those lungs Get up and praise the Lord I know it gets hard sometimes But let it out, say Come on, my soul Oh, don't you get shy of me Lift up your song Cause you've got a lion inside those lungs Get up and praise the Lord

Hey! So I will So I'll throw my hands And praise you again Cause all I have Is a heart made to you Cause you deserve it And I know it's not yours I'm nothing else in for a king Except for a heart singing Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah You became a glory, hallelujah Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah So I'll throw my hands And praise you again Cause all I have Is a heart made to you Hallelujah, and I know And I know it's not much But I'm nothing else in for a king Except for a heart singing Hallelujah, hallelujah So I'll throw my hands So I'll throw my hands And praise you again Cause all I have Is a heart made to you Hallelujah, and I know And I know it's not much But I'm nothing else in for a king Except for a heart singing Hallelujah, hallelujah Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh My soul cries Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh With every breath We remember that it is your breath in our lungs. One time you breathed it into Adam's nostrils and we have been perpetually breathing the breath of God. I know we have a lot to deal with, heavy weights, rough seasons, but I believe the Lord gave us his breath his ruach to remember that greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. To remember that no, I will be with you always even until the end of the age. It's my breath in your lungs. I gave it to you for strength and for power and to be reminded that you are mine. So every time you breathe in and out, may you be reminded that the Lord is with you and he'll never leave you or forsake you. Can we sing this together? You give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, you restore every heart that is broken. Oh, can we say, great are you Lord. You give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, you restore every heart that is broken.

You give hope, you restore every heart that is broken. So this is our response. Great are you Lord. Since your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise, pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. Dear Lord. All the earth will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry. These bones will say, great are you Lord. All the earth will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry. These bones will say, great are you Lord. Great are you Lord. Great is the Lord. And great we're to be praised. All the earth will shout your praise. That's you and me. Our hearts will cry. These bones will say, great are you Lord. From the north and the south, the east and the west. Great are you Lord. Our hearts will cry. These bones will say, great are you Lord. It's your breath in our lungs.

So we pour out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour it out. Pour it out. It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour it out. Pour it out our praise. It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. You pour it over. Great are you Lord. We sing, great are you Lord. You're worthy of it all. Worthy are you Lord. I'm still in awe of how you paddle the boat Great are you, Lord If you need a reminder of how good He is, just breathe If you need a reminder of how good He is, just breathe If you need a reminder of how good He is, just breathe If you need a reminder of how good He is, just breathe If you need a reminder that He still loves you, just breathe And if you need a reminder He's pulling you through, just breathe If you need a reminder He's making a way, just breathe And if you need a reminder He's with you today, just breathe Just breathe Just breathe Just breathe Just breathe Just breathe Just breathe

Just breathe Just breathe No striving Just breathe No stressing Just breathe Just abide Just breathe Just breathe Cause it's your breath in our lungs So we pour out our praise Pour out our praise It's your breath in our lungs So we pour out our praise to you Last time, come on It's your breath in our lungs So we pour out our praise Pour out our praise It's your breath in our lungs So we pour out our praise to you Only God Great are you, Lord Last time, sing Great are you, Lord As many of you know, Pastor Sam has been in a series called The Game Plan and the anchor text in this message has been found in Philippians chapter 3 and I want to quickly highlight

three of the verses before I get into my main text So if you would, listen to how Paul describes the Christian life Philippians 3 verse 12 says I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection but I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me No, dear brothers and sisters I have not achieved it but I focus on this one thing forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus is calling us I love that Paul reaches for the language of an athlete pressing on and straining forward a race with an end to reach and a prize that's waiting at the finish but notice something before we go further Paul did not say he presses on in order to take hold of God he says he presses on to take hold of the one who has already taken hold of him

his pressing on is not how he earns it it is his response his response to already being gripped by grace I want you to hold on to that and it's going to matter a great deal by the time we're done with this message this morning Now Pastor Sam, as you know has built this game plan series around football starting with the kickoff followed up with get your head in the game and a few weeks ago Pastor Meredith shared an incredible message of staying in the game but this morning if you would allow me to take us off the football field and on to the triathlon course the triathlon course and the title my message is called built to endure so if statistics hold true there are with a few exceptions there are few in this room who have ever considered doing an Iron Man triathlon shout out to the Iron Man triathletes in the room I know a few of you and I'm I stand in awe of you and what you do also want to give a quick shout out to the team World Vision athletes those of you who have run or are training to run with Team World Vision our church team running for clean water we had a long run yesterday and it was a hot one so bless you and your continued training but an Iron Man is not just a race it is an endurance event it is a hundred and forty point six miles of having a very long very honest conversation with yourself about what moves you in 2010 I competed in my first Iron Man at Madison Wisconsin with my brother Chad and our close friend Jason they're both here today appreciate you guys being here but it was an incredible experience and if you would I'm going to take you to that start line it was race day and I was treading water in the early morning light not standing on shore not lined up in the corral I was already in deep water couldn't touch treading water I was already working before the race had even begun

surrounded by over 2,500 other athletes doing the same thing I had my wetsuit on I had my goggles in place my swim cap was pulled over no questions about why I needed a swim cap it's required I had the swim cap on I had numbers written on me in permanent marker on my legs on my arm and on my hands the water was cool my heart was already pounding and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was asking a question I was not ready to answer what did I get myself into then the cannon fired and everything became chaos 2.4 miles of open water not swimming in a quiet pool lane a black line on the bottom to follow but wouldn't what triathletes call the human washing machine over 2,500 bodies search forward at the same time arm swinging legs kicking someone's elbow found the side of my head somebody's hand reached and grabbed my goggles and pulled them off another person reached forward and grabbed my foot as I tried to take a stroke my hand landed on someone's back I couldn't see the bottom I could barely see in front of me and every few strokes I had to lift my head just to find a buoy to confirm I was still going in the right direction you see me I'm right there I'm right there that one right there that's me and I had to find a rhythm in the middle of all that I had to slow my breathing calm my mind and trust my training because even as I was fighting through the water I knew what was waiting for me on the other side 112 miles on the bike and after that a marathon 26.2 miles on foot not as a fresh run run race morning but as someone who had already been in motion for the better part of the day a hundred and forty point six miles total to give you context Church that's roughly leaving here at Grand Rapids first and going to downtown Detroit a hundred and forty point six miles the clock started at 7 a.m. and would not stop until midnight 17 hours to do something that would take most people several days if they attempted it at all but right then I was still in the water and somewhere out on that course I ran out of myself everything I had trained for everything I had prepared everything I had stored up and carefully rationed across that long day it was gone it was gone and the finish line was still out there somewhere ahead of me so in the

Philippians text Paul tells us to press on to strain forward to run to the end of the race but he doesn't spell where the strength to press on comes from for that I want to take you to a second passage and this is going to be our main text for today it is in Isaiah 40 if you have your Bibles or your eBibles your glow Bibles you're welcome to open it up to Isaiah verse 40 but let me give you a little context about what's going on when we get to Isaiah 40 this was one of the darkest seasons in this nation's history the Babylonian exile Babylon had risen as a dominant world power. They would conquer Jerusalem, destroy Solomon's temple, carry the people of Judah into captivity. Families were separated. The city was in ruins. The temple, the place where God dwelled, was destroyed. It wasn't just political crisis. It was a crisis of faith. They felt unseen. They felt forgotten, as if God in heaven had stopped paying attention. Into that exhaustion, into that moment, God responds with a prophetic word through the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 28 says, Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youth grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. There are four things that jump out of this passage to be, and I want to walk through those four things this morning. At each point throughout this passage, I'm going to come back to the race course, because God made every single one of these verses very personal to me that day. So the first point is everyone grows weary. Everyone grows weary. Briefly coming back to football, there's a former football coach by the name of George Allen Sr. who said this quote. He said, People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. I feel like I am the poster child of that quote, because I exemplify mediocre ability, especially when it comes to athletics. I'm not the fastest. I'm not the strongest. I'm certainly not going to finish first. I am the poster child of mediocre ability. But determination and refusal to quit is something that I feel like God has given me in spades. The person who keeps showing up, keeps grinding, keeps moving forward when everyone else has stopped, that person accomplishes things more

talented people may never accomplish if they quit. But I want to suggest something this morning that goes deeper than determination. I've determined there's a point in every life where determination runs out, where the will to keep going collides with a reality that simply cannot overcome it on its own. George Allen was coaching football players. He was calling them to outwork their limitations. Isaiah is speaking to people in exile. He's not calling them to try harder. He's not calling them to work more. He's pointing them to a God who never runs out. And that's a fundamentally different conversation. We're going to go through our main text verse by verse. And if we could start, I'm going to go in a little unique order. I'm going to go start with verse 30. It says, even youth grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall. Notice who Isaiah is talking about. He's not talking about the old. He's not talking about the weak or the unprepared. He's talking about the young, the strong, the ones who have the most left in the tank. And he says, even they grow tired, even they stumble, even they fall. It's not a criticism. It's an honest description of what it means to be human. Coming back to my story, I had been training for and competing in triathlons for three years before I ever attempted an Ironman. Sprint distances, Olympic, even a 70.3 race. Those built the foundation, sharpened the discipline, taught me what my body could and could not do. Mind you, mediocre ability. I was not a beginner walking into something I didn't understand. I put in the work. I had logged the miles and I knew what endurance cost. But the Ironman is at a different level. So before I registered, I decided I need to see it firsthand. In 2009, a full year before I raced, I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin for the race, not as an athlete, but as a volunteer. At the finish line, I was a catcher. I was a catcher. You might not know what a catcher does, but the job of a catcher is to be the person who literally catches the athletes as they cross the finish line. Because after 140.6 miles, many of them cannot stand on their own. Early in the day, most finishers came through upright and composed. But as the night settled in, something shifted. The athletes crossing in the later hours were not just spent, they were completely emptied out. Some were weeping, some were barely conscious, some crossed that line and simply could not hold themselves up for another moment. And as I stood there for hours watching these athletes,

I was inspired. I wanted to be one of them. I thought, this is cool. So the next morning, I woke up, stood in line, paid my ridiculously expensive $650 entrance fee, and committed the next 12 months of my life to become an Ironman. And let me tell you, training for an Ironman is not a casual commitment. It is months of structured, deliberate, relentless preparation. Early morning swims and runs before anyone is awake. Long bike rides and evenings or on weekends when my family had other plans. Swim sessions, brick workouts, nutrition planning, recovery, logging the miles, following the plan day after day after day. It was essentially another full-time job on top of the full-time job that I already had, and a family. I was training to endure the Ironman, but the training itself required endurance. Now, here's what I wanna say to the room. Some of you are tired in ways that sleep does not fix. Some of you are parents running on empty, giving everything you have to your kids and wondering when someone is gonna pour back into you. Some of you are working a job that is slowly draining you. Some of you are carrying a diagnosis that you have not told many people about,

but you're fearful of the prognosis. Some of you are grieving a loved one and the world has moved on, but you have not. And some of you are simply weary in your faith. You still believe, you still show up, but the fire feels far away. You're capable, you're faithful, and you are tired. And God looks at you right this morning and says, I see that, that's real. It's not weakness, it's not what it means to be a human. It is what it means to be a human in a world that asks more of you than you were designed to carry alone because everyone grows weary. But here's what the text does not do. It does not stop there because the weariness of verse 30 is not the destination, it is the setup. It is the honest acknowledgement that creates space for everything that comes next. You can't receive what God wants to give you in verse 31 until you are honest about where you are in verse 30. The starting point isn't pretending that you have more left than what you do. The starting point is honesty about the miles, about the fatigue, about the fact that you're treading water and the race is still ahead of you. That's not defeat, it's the beginning of something. Which brings me to my second point. Exhaustion is the invitation. Exhaustion is the invitation.

If we could go backwards in the scripture to verse 29, it says, he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. I want you to sit with that for a moment. It doesn't say God gives strength to the strong, he gives it to the weary. He doesn't increase the power of the capable, he increases the power of the weak. The invitation of this verse is not for people who have it all together. It is for people who have run out of what brought them there. And what I've learned is that you will not discover that truth sitting still. You discover it in the miles. And sometimes the miles have to get very hard before you're willing to receive what God is offering. Let me take you back to 2009 again, the night I stood as a finish line catcher. I told you about the athletes who crossed that line in the final minutes before midnight, but what I didn't tell you is what happened after midnight. I watched athletes cross that finish line after the clock ran out. Men and women who had been on that course for more than 17 hours, who swam the 2.4 miles, had ridden 112, and were finishing a marathon on sheer will, they crossed that line still moving after midnight, and when they crossed, the clock had already run out. No official time, no finisher medal, no announcement over the speaker calling their name,

just a quiet, devastating, did not finish, a DNF, as it's called, after more than 17 hours of giving everything that they had. I watched grown men and women leave everything on that course and have it not count. So I stood there in the dark, and I made myself a promise. When I was on that course as an athlete. I was going to respect that cutoff. I was going to do whatever I could to finish inside the time because I had seen what it cost to come up short. I had no idea how personal that promise was going to become. Fast forward to my race day 2010. I'm about halfway through the 112-mile bike and things are going perfect. They're going as planned. The training is holding. The pace is where it needs to be. And then I felt it. Something shifted underneath me. The back of my bike began to slide, not dramatically, not a crash, but in a slow, unsettling side-to-side movement like the rear wheel had lost grip on pavement, like I was riding on grease instead of the road. And I knew it before I even looked down. I knew I had a flat tire. I pulled over and assessed the damage and at that moment I came face-to-face with the one gap in my preparation. I forgot to pack a replacement tube for my bike.

I tried to inflate it and started riding again. Within minutes it was flat a second time. I made it to an aid station, asked them to call the course mechanics. The mechanics were already out somewhere else on the course, miles away, helping other athletes, so I sat down and I waited. After a little while, a volunteer walked up to me quietly, almost apologetically, and said, Sir, the sweep van is just a few miles away. The sweep van is a vehicle that follows the slowest athletes on the course, marking the cutoff times. If the sweep van passes you, if you're slower than that van, you are disqualified. You're removed from the race. It doesn't negotiate, it doesn't make exceptions, and when it passes you, your race is over. So I grabbed my pump, I inflated the damaged tire, and I started riding, feeling it deflate as I pedaled. I'm inflating it again, riding a little further, inflating again, gaining a few miles down the road, one desperate pump at a time. And then the mechanic finally arrived. She got to work on my rear wheel and as she was replacing the tube, I watched the sweep van roll past me. My heart dropped. Graciously, graciously, a course official stepped in and told the van,

because of the mechanical issue, I could continue my race once my tire was repaired, as long as I moved in front of the van. The van kept moving, my race was still alive, but a sobering reality hit me at that moment. I was in last place. Dead last of over 2,500 athletes. I was at the very back of the pack with a repaired tire, a ticking clock, and a bike cutoff time of 5.30, standing between me and everything I had worked for. I started riding as hard as I could, and five miles later, I heard a loud pop! And the rear wheel was flat again. Thankfully, the mechanic still behind me came quickly. This time, she replaced both the tube and the tire, but the damage was done. Between the flats and the waiting, I had lost nearly an hour and a half of my expected time. I was exhausted, I was overwhelmed, and I wanted to quit. Verse 29 is not saying that preparation doesn't matter. Three years of shorter races mattered, 12 months of training mattered, all of it mattered, but preparation gets you to the moment. It does not carry you through it. There's a point in every season of life where the gap between what you prepared for and what you're actually facing becomes impossible to close on your own.

The flat tire was not in my training plan. Dead last with a cutoff closing in was not in my training plan. Verse 29 lives here. God gives strength to the weary, not to the prepared, not to the disciplined, to the weary, to the person who has hit bottom of what they brought with them and still is somehow moving forward. Exhaustion is not the end of the story. Exhaustion is the invitation to God. My friends, hear me. You cannot grab a hold of what God is offering while you're still white-knuckling your own resources. Some of you have been trying to work your way out of a situation that God is trying to use to develop something inside of you. The gap is not a sign that he's forgotten you. The gap is where he shows up, church. Which is my third point. I want to encourage you to know that God, expect God to show up. Expect God to show up, expect him to show up. Coming back to verse 28, it says, do you not know, have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. Everything else in this passage flows from that verse. The strength God gives in verse 29, the renewal promised in verse 31, all of it is grounded right here

in the nature of who God is. He does not grow tired, he does not grow weary, he does not run out of what he brought to the day, which means when you're empty, God is not. When you're in last place, alone on a course that is emptying out around you, riding as hard as you can toward a cutoff that may not be forgiving, he's not wringing his hands, he's not scrambling, God is not depleted by your crisis. I was at mile 80 of the bike course. I'd been riding alone for a long time, passing other riders, trying to move up from last place. I had told myself to keep moving. I was praying, I was attempting to sing worship songs very poorly, once again, mediocre ability here. I was trying to convince myself that quitting was not an option, but somewhere around mile 80, the telling was not working anymore. And then I saw something in the distance, a figure on a bike coming towards me, which made no sense. Every athlete on this course should be moving the same direction that I was, but this rider was coming the opposite direction, and as they got closer, he slowed down, turned around, and pulled up next to me. He asked me how I was doing. I told him the truth. I said the flats, the lost time. I told him about the sweet van

clawing my way up from dead last, the cutoff that was looming for 5.30 p.m., the fact that I was riding out of whatever had gotten me this far. I told him I was thinking of quitting. Seeing the race number on his helmet and his bike, I asked him why he was riding in the opposite direction. He smiled and he told me he was not racing that day. He explained that he had competed in a different Ironman just a couple weeks before in another city, another course, but that he lived in the area, and that afternoon, something inside him felt led to get on his bike and ride out on the course to see how the athletes were doing. He wasn't an official. He wasn't in my training plan. He wasn't part of my support crew. He was just there, and for the next 25 miles, that man rode with me. He rode ahead to the aid stations and came back with food and water so I would not have to stop and lose time. He crested the hills before me and rallied whatever spectators were still out on the course, calling them to cheer, to clap, to remind me that somebody was watching, somebody was pulling for me. He took out his cell phone and he called my wife, Susan.

In the loneliest stretch of the loneliest miles of the hardest thing I've ever attempted, a stranger made sure the person who loved me the most knew that I had not quit, that I was still out there, that I was still moving. I've thought about that man many times since race day, and I know what I believe. I believe God saw me at mile 80, alone, depleted, poorly singing worship music through gritted teeth, and I believe God responded not with a feeling, not with a permission to stop, not with a sudden surge of superhuman energy, which I would have taken at that moment, but with a person, an encourager, a friend on a bike who had no logical reason to be there. Isn't that how God so often works? With the specific and the personal that only He could arrange. At 5.18 p.m. I completed the bike course, 12 minutes before the bike cut off. Thank you. Now hear me, church, you are going to have a mile 80. If you have not had it yet, it is coming. A moment where you, or what you prepared is not enough. Where you are further behind than you ever planned to be, where the cutoff feels closer than the finish line and the voice in your head is making a very reasonable case for quitting. God's not surprised by that moment.

He's an everlasting God who does not grow tired or weary. and his understanding of what you need at that moment is beyond anything that you could arrange yourself. He may send someone on a bike. He may send a phone call, a conversation, an encourager, a pastor, a neighbor, a friend who shows up with no logical reason to be there. He may meet you in a way so specific, so perfectly suited to what you need that you cannot explain it away as coincidence. Expect God to show up, which brings us to the fourth verse. Isaiah 40, verse 31 says this. Get back there. But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. I want you to notice the word hope. I've bolded it, and I've had it underlined. It comes from the root Hebrew word kavah. It doesn't mean what we usually think when we use the word hope. We use the word hope casually. I hope it doesn't rain. I hope my phone doesn't die. I hope the traffic light stays green. I hope MSU crushes Michigan this year. I hope the sermon doesn't go long. All of those things we hope in. It's a kind of optimistic uncertainty about something

that we cannot control. Kavah is something entirely different. Kavah means to wait with expectation, to be intertwined with it, to be bound together with the very thing you're waiting for. It's not a passive, wishful thinking. It is an active, intentional, anchored in confidence in the one thing you are trusting. In other words, hope in this verse is not a feeling. Hope is a decision. It's a decision. And that decision is what renews everything. I came off the bike at 518 PM with 12 minutes to spare, and I still had to run a marathon. There was very little adrenaline left as I headed out on the run. A brief second wind from seeing my family was so short-lived. My legs had been on the bike for hours. My body had been in motion since dawn, and now I had to run 26.2 miles. The math was simple. To finish before midnight, I had to keep moving. Not fast, not gracefully, just forward. One step at a time, one mile at a time. Whatever the Ironman shuffle looked like on tired legs at that hour, it was going to be enough. There's no dramatic story from the marathon, just miles. Long, quiet, relentless miles in the growing dark with a finish line somewhere ahead that I was committed to reaching.

And that commitment, that decision to keep moving towards something I believed was real, even though I couldn't see it, that was my kavod. That was my hope. That is what it looks like to be intertwined with a finish line that has not appeared yet, but you absolutely refuse to stop believing in. Also in this verse, the soar, run, walk progression is worth pausing on. There are moments in life, and there are moments in that race where you soared. Finish, fresh, strong, everything moving the way that it's meant to. There's moments when you run the steady middle miles of discipline, quiet confidence. But there are also moments where you walk, when soaring is a memory, running is gone, and the only thing left for you is to not stop. Walking and not fainting is not the consolation prize of this verse. It is the most hard one of the three. I walked portions of that marathon. There were miles that running was not available to me, and walking was all I had. But I kept moving forward. And then at some point in the night, with the finish line getting closer, something renewed in me. Not because I found a hidden reserve I had been saving. That certainly was not the case.

But because the end was real, and the God who had carried me through the entire day was going to carry me through that finish line. I crossed that finish line at 16 hours, 2 minutes, and 35 seconds. And as I crossed that line, the announcer's voice cut through everything over the loudspeaker. Thousands of athletes and spectators heard, Doug, you are an Ironman. Look at those skinny guys. What happened to them? If you ever heard those words spoken over you at the end of an Iron Man, you understand what they do to a person. They're not just an announcement, they're a declaration, a confirmation of something the race itself had already proven but needed to be spoken out loud over me at the finish. Here's what I know about that finish line. The hours my training accounted for, those were in there. But so were the miles that only God could cover. The flat tire, the sweet van, the lost hour and a half, the mile 80 that almost broke me, the angel who rode 25 miles beside me and called my wife, the marathon miles I walked and shuffled in the dark, all of that was in 16 hours, 2 minutes, and 35 seconds. If I could, could I just share one more thing with you about that day and it only hit me recently going back through pictures getting ready for this. I came across a photo of my son Corden from race day, mind you it was 16 years ago, so little Corden is up there. And Susan had made these shirts for both of them to wear. Susan said Iron Wife on the front, Corden said Iron Son. And on the back was two things. One was 875, which was my race bib number for the day. And the second thing was the word stand.

And I saw that and I'm like, what does the word stand mean? I had to ask Susan, who thankfully her memory is way better than mine, reminded me that she put that there because it was one of my favorite training songs at the moment, Michael W. Smith's version of the worship song, The Stand. The song I listened to over and over and over through those long, lonely months of preparation and honestly the song that I sang to myself out on the race course. Here's the chorus. If you don't remember it, it says, so I'll stand with arms high and heart abandoned in awe of the one who gave it all. I'll stand my soul, Lord to you surrendered, all I am is yours. Now think about that with me. If you would, think about, and Iron Man can be a monument to self-reliance, 140.6 miles of moving on your own strength. But the song that carried me through all that training was not a song about my strength at all. It was a song about surrender, about standing with your arms lifted high and your heart completely abandoned, about being so in awe of the one who gave it all that you give him everything in return. While I was out on that course, I convinced myself I was enduring of my own power. My family was wearing a shirt that told the truth. Real standing is not self-reliance. Real standing is surrender. You were never meant to stand on your own strength. You were meant to stand surrendered with arms held high and heart abandoned, held up by the one who never grows weary. And that word of surrender is exactly where you may find yourself this morning because there is a kind of weariness that goes deeper than tired legs and long seasons, a weariness that no training plan and no amount of determination can fix. And the only answer to it is the very thing this word on my son's shirt was pointing to. The Bible tells us that every one of us was born separated from God, not because we weren't

trying hard enough, but because sin came into the world. And here's the trap so many people spend their whole life in. We think if we're just disciplined enough, if we're just good enough, if we just work harder, if we're determined enough, we can close that gap ourselves. We can train our way to God. But you can't earn your way across the distance between you and a holy God by sheer effort. That's the whole point of grace. The God who never grows weary stepped into our weariness. Jesus came and ran a race that we never could. He lived the life we could not live, and then he went to a cross and took upon himself the full weight of our sin, our failure, our distance from God. And in his final moments, Jesus said three words, it is finished. His own finish line. He crossed it for you, but it didn't stop there. Three days later, he walked out of that grave, proving that he has the power to give you and me a brand new life. So the gospel is not a try harder gospel. The gospel is not be more disciplined. The gospel is that Jesus already finished the race and he's offering you the reward that you could never earn on your own. Salvation is not achieved. Salvation is received.