Gold medals...for me?

Nastia Liukin just won the gold medal in Women's all-around gymnastics. She was born in Moscow and moved to the U.S. with her family. Her father is her coach, and he was a gold medalist in 1988 (her mother also a former world champion). How incredibly sweet for a parent to not only win olympic gold, but then to coach a child to gold themselves. One can only imagine the pride that family is feeling right now in their daughter, and she in her parents.

Do we as Christians truly value and understand the inheritance we have waiting for us? Am I recognizing that we are to share in the Gold Medal standing of Jesus before the greatest Olympic judge that ever will be, God Himself? Do I get the fact that Jesus wrestled against his own humanity and against satan and came out victorious----and after he did that, he went on to absorb the Father's Holy Wrath against all sin?! Talk about Olympic competition. Give me your strongest weighlifter, your best marathon runner, and all the other atheletes combined, and none holds a candle to Jesus and what he endured, pouring out love instead of hatred or spite. Hallelujah, what a savior!

But it doesn't stop there. Jesus comes from his Olympic podium and shouts out to the crowd of spectators, "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved"(Romans 10:9), that is, you will share in His gold-medal standing before the Father and there will be "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). Do you get that? Do you realize that you will stand beside him on the Olympic platform of all time, making Beijing and Sydney and Seoul and Atlanta and Los Angeles and Athens, Paris, Mexico City, Moscow...all pale in comparison.

Do you get that? Does that grip your heart! Does that make you want to perservere and press on?

The author of this blog realizes all to painfully that this reality doesn't grip him NEARLY enough.

May we all be renewed in true knowledge and holiness.
Amen