Galatians 5:13-6:10 (ESV)
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Happy New Year, and for me personally, I hope it’s exciting in different ways than this year was. Having the house on the market most of the year, changing careers (thank you God for that blessing as unforeseen as it was), finishing college, my wife’s parents both passing to our Lord’s hands, family dynamics changing as we all grow older, etc.

How many of us start something without a vision of what the end is going to look like? When you break an egg for breakfast, even if you don’t know if it’s going to be sunny side up or scrambled, at least you know it’ll be cooked. You wouldn’t take it out to eat if you didn’t have some sort of plan. New Year’s resolutions are made with a goal in mind, an end. We don’t start something without an end in mind, even if it’s vague and shifting. Eventually, the idea will coalesce into something that has an end, a result.

So it is with our life. We wake up every morning until we don’t one day. The race we’ve run, the life we’ve lived, comes to conclusion. While we’re still breathing and able to impact our results, as we start a new year, as we set goals to achieve, take time to consider the biggest task we have in our life – our life. At the end, what do you want the results to be? For me, it’s to spend eternity in the presence of Christ, of God. I’ll get there by following him in this race.

We are called to freedom from the laws of legalism and society to the redeeming love of Christ. Everything hinges on love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Unselfishly. Wholeheartedly. Respectfully. Luke 6:31 (ESV) And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

That’s the starting line every day.

1 Corinthians 9:24-25 (ESV)
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.

We all start things with an end in mind, and with our lives we can do the same thing. If we love sacrificially, if we run our race in love and sacrifice, if we live to serve others, if we live for Christ and his calling, we’ll have run the race to win the imperishable.

Run the race following God. Romans 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?