Well, let me invite you, this morning to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 12, Hebrews chapter 12 for our time of study in the word this morning. if there's any passage that I find myself thinking about more than any other over the span of the New Year's week, it is Hebrews 12. Every year, I, I go back to this passage and meditate on it afresh, and, and what I wanna do this morning is to take a break from Genesis and just, share some meditations from Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 and, 2 with the time that we have, this morning. If you want to give a title to the message, it would be Running Our Course in 2016.
Running Our Course in 2016. let me start with this. Walter Payton, is a name that might be familiar to some of you, was one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. over the length of his career, he ran for 16,726 yards, which is actually the second highest in NFL.
History, and he averaged 4.4 yards a carry, which is just absolutely remarkable. What that means if you configure it differently, is that throughout the course of his career in the NFL, Walter Payton ran for a total of 9.5 miles. And he got knocked down every 4.4 yards of that 9.5 mile journey. That's getting tackled over 3000 times.
Imagine running a 9.5 mile course, running from here to the Tyler Mall, for example. And getting tackled every 4.5 yards. Getting back up, running another 4.5 yards, and getting tackled again and again and again, the entire journey as you're running to the Tyler Mall. If such a course were set before you, would you run it?...
