The men and women who made the greatest impact on the world were those who were totally focused and sold out to their vision. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, once said, ‘If I had three hundred men who feared nothing but God, hated nothing but sin, and were determined to know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, I would set the world on fire.’ Jonathan Edwards, whose ministry sparked the Great Awakening in America, made this his life’s motto: ‘Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I will.’ C.T. Studd, one of England’s greatest athletes, shocked the world when he gave up fame and fortune to be a missionary to China. ‘If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him,’ he explained. Missionary Jim Elliot, who died as a martyr in South America, said, ‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.’ The day you were born, God had a track for you to run on. But to win, you must get rid of 1. Anything that weighs you down, and 2. Anything that trips you up.
You can never be a great athlete or expect to compete successfully in a race when you are carrying lots of baggage. You are to jettison anything that serves as a baggage to weigh you down in your Christian race. You must do away with bad friends who will lure you away from your faith, deal with any secret sins in your life as well as feed on the word of God at all times and not on social media. We should endeavour to heed to the words in Hebrews which says ‘Let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us, looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus’. When you are sold out to God’s vision for your life, you will surely make an impact in life through the power of God.