It was Barcelona in 1992, and the world was watching. Derek Redmond, a sprinter from Great Britain, was lined up at the starting blocks for the 400-meter Olympic semifinals. Just one more long lap stood between him and the finals—and hopefully his dream of Olympic glory.
Derek had stood in a similar spot four years earlier at the Olympic Games in Seoul, only to tear his Achilles tendon an hour before the first race. The rehab from that injury was long and difficult, but Derek had been at the top of his game in the year before the Games in Barcelona. Then, once the Games began, he had easily won his first two heats to put himself in a great place for the semifinals.
This was his time.
The starter’s pistol rang out, and Derek shot from the blocks in a burst of speed. He was running smooth. Running fast. Nearing the halfway point of the race, he was on pace to grab hold of his dream and never let go.
Then, tragedy. Derek popped upward and reached backward toward his thigh. His face contorted into a mask of agony as he collapsed to the ground. His hamstring had torn. For Derek Redmond, the race was over. His dream was over. His career as an Olympic sprinter was over.
A stretcher team jogged over toward Derek to carry him off the track, but the young man refused. Hobbling back up to his feet, Derek hopped forward on one leg. He made sure to stay in his lane and worked toward the finish line. If he could not win the race, he would at least complete it.
Then, at that bleak moment, something incredible happened. Derek’s father, Jim, ran down from the stands and jogged over to join his son. He wrapped an arm around his boy. Held his hand. Derek, overcome with emotion, sobbed on his father’s shoulder.
Jim’s original goal was to prevent Derek from causing more harm to his leg. “I actually went on the track to try to stop him inflicting further damage to himself,” he later told reporters. But Derek had a different goal. “He asked me to get him back in that lane,” said Jim, “and I offered him a shoulder to lean on.”
Two times, Olympic officials approached Derek and Jim as they limped toward the finish line. They wanted to help move Derek off the track, likely because another race was scheduled to start. Both times, Jim waved the officials away. He was resolute in swatting away any obstacle between his son and his goal. “I saw my [son] having a problem and it was my duty to help.”1
With his father’s help, Derek Redmond crossed the finish line. He finished his race.
I’ve come across many stories in my decades as a pastor and author, but I can’t think of a better illustration of what happens to so many of us over the course of our lives. We start out with dreams. Big dreams. Dreams of success and impact and meaning and purpose. We start the race with high hopes and smiling faces.
Sooner or later, though, life hits back. And life can hit hard.
Maybe you’ve taken some hits yourself. Maybe, even as you read these pages, you’re dealing with something torn. Your health. Your career. Your marriage. Your personal integrity. You’re on the ground, watching the other racers sprint ahead, and you’re not sure if you can keep going.
If you’ve been in that place, or if you are in that place even now, remember that your heavenly Father isn’t watching impassively from the grandstands of heaven. He has come down. He is close, and His arm is around you. He is lifting you up, and He is ready to help you forward.
The question you have to answer is this: Will you finish the race?
That’s the choice you have to make, and it’s the same choice faced by the apostle Paul so many years ago. Remember, life hit Paul pretty hard. Actually, it hit him quite a few times—and quite literally. Five times Paul received what the ancient world called “forty stripes minus one,” which was a flogging carefully calculated to inflict the maximum amount of pain on a person without killing them. Paul was beaten with rods. He was attacked by mobs. His character was assassinated. He was thrown in prison many times, and he likely spent years in a Roman jail. He was shipwrecked and heartbroken and betrayed.
Yet at the end of it all, he was able to write these words to his spiritual son Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).
How did Paul finish the race? He gave us the answer in that same verse: “I have kept the faith.”
That’s my goal for you and me as we walk through these pages together—that we would learn what it means to keep the faith even in the most difficult of circumstances and seasons. That we would hold on to our faith as a strong anchor in the storm, and that we would be empowered by that faith when the road seems long and our strength is low.
There will be obstacles of course, and we’re going to explore many of them in these pages:
There will be blessings as well. Learning to keep the faith will equip us with wonders including:
I don’t mean to imply the road will be easy or the race will always end in victory. I know from experience that life brings its challenges even for children of God, and I’ll share some of my own challenges with you in the pages to come. But as we choose to keep the faith and stay in the race, we will learn how to stand strong and remain strong even in a world that seems to be always turning upside down.
Can you feel the Father’s strong right arm holding you up? Can you hear Him speaking strength into your heart? Then let’s turn the page and discover together what is required of us, and what will be gained by us, when we keep the faith.
—David Jeremiah