The 20 Mile March

Good afternoon, everyone. Just had to take a minute to get all the technology working here. Good to see everyone here. Welcome to our visitors, and good to see a few people who have not been able to make it for a few weeks. Hope you're enjoying the Sabbath. It's a little refreshing getting some rain. We've had a lot of it lately, but I don't know. I always like a little bit of a change in the weather, so hopefully it won't be too rainy for too long out there.

I don't know about you, but I've always enjoyed stories of adventure ever since I was a little kid. I've always been interested in stories of explorers. When I was young, I used to love paging through books and looking at pictures of old castles and old forgotten places overgrown by the jungle and by trees and things.

I always dream about wandering across those places, what it must have been like for explorers going through South America and finding some old Mayan temple that had been overgrown by the jungle or going to different parts of the Middle East or Europe and exploring old castles. Stories of exploration and adventure have always intrigued me. I'd like to start off today's message relaying one of these stories. It dates back about 100 years, actually.

For those of you who are looking for titles for messages, you can call this one the 20 Mile March. It is all about a story about one of the great explorers, probably someone that you've never heard of. His name is Roald Amundsen.

No looks of knowledge on anyone's face. Good. Well, let me start by reading an article that came out in Fortune magazine. This is from October 2011. It was titled, How to Manage Through Chaos. It was an article written by a guy named Jim Collins. Jim Collins has written a number of different books on leadership and management and is well known for doing exhaustive studies of business leaders and coming up with different approaches and ways that problems can be approached and solved. In this article, he was discussing a book that he had recently published at that point in time called Great by Choice. In this book, he considers thousands of different companies and in the end boiled it down to seven companies that he studied. He called them 10x companies, companies that achieved ten times what others did. He was trying to achieve or to find what the secrets were that enabled the leaders of those companies to drive the results that they did.

He used the example of the explorers that explored the South Pole and were the first ones to reach the South Pole in putting together his theory of the 20-mile march. I'd like to start by relaying the story to you as he wrote about it in this article and then talk about it a little bit in the context of our spiritual lives and what we're trying to accomplish in our rather short time that we spend here on planet Earth.

The first caption here is, Are you an Amundsen or a Scott? And he writes, In October 1911, two teams of adventurers made their final preparations in their quest to be the first people in modern history to reach the South Pole. For one team, it would be a race to victory and a safe return home.

For the second team, it would be a devastating defeat, reaching the Pole only to find the wind-whipped flags of their rivals planted 34 days earlier, followed by a race for their lives, a race that they lost in the end as the advancing winter swallowed them up. All five members of the second Pole team perished, staggering from exhaustion, suffering the dead-black pain of frostbite, and then freezing to death as some wrote their final journal entries and notes to loved ones back home. It's a near-perfect matched pair. Here we have two expedition leaders, Roald Amundsen the winner and Robert Falcon Scott the loser, of similar ages 39 and 43 and with comparable experiences.

Amundsen and Scott started their respective journeys for the Pole within days of each other, both facing a round trip of more than 1,400 miles into an uncertain and unforgiving environment. Temperatures could easily reach below 20, below zero, even during the summer, and were made worse by gale force winds. And keep in mind, this was 1911. They had no means of modern communication to call back to base camp, no radio, no cell phones, no satellite links, and a rescue would have been highly improbable at the South Pole if they made a mistake.

One leader led his team to victory and safety, and the other led his team to defeat and death. Amundsen and Scott achieved dramatically different outcomes, not because they faced dramatically different circumstances. In the first 34 days of their respective expeditions, according to Roland Huntford in his superb book, The Last Place on Earth, Amundsen and Scott had exactly the same ratio, 56% of good days to bad days of weather.

If they faced the same environment in the same year with the same goal, the causes of their respective success and failure simply cannot be the environment. They had divergent outcomes, principally because they displayed very different behaviors. At this point, Collins, in his article, goes through his theory and his premise that he lays out of the 20-mile march.

And what it is, in essence, is the idea that committing to a set level of achievement on a daily basis with persistence and discipline is a key to achieving success. Focusing on achieving a certain amount every single day, no matter what the outside environment brings along. He goes on to write about Amundsen's exploration. On December 12, 1911, keep in mind we're talking here about the South Pole, so December is the height of the summer, Amundsen and his team reached a point 45 miles from the South Pole. He had no idea of Scott's whereabouts.

Again, they were racing to be the first ones to the Pole. Scott had taken a different route slightly to the west, so for all Amundsen knew, Scott might have been ahead of him. The weather had turned clear and calm, and sitting high on the smooth polar plateau, Amundsen had perfect ski and sled conditions for the remainder of his journey to the South Pole. Amundsen noted, going and surface as good as ever, this is a quote from his diary, weather splendid, calm with sunshine.

His team had journeyed more than 650 miles, carving a path straight over a mountain range, climbing from sea level to over 10,000 feet. And now, with the anxiety of where's Scott, knowing a way, his team could reach its goal within 24 hours in one hard push. What did Amundsen do? He went 17 miles. Throughout the journey, Amundsen adhered to a regiment of consistent progress, never going too far in good weather, careful to stay away from the red line of exhaustion that could leave his team exposed, and yet pressing ahead in nasty weather to stay on pace.

Amundsen throttled back his well-tuned team to travel between 15 and 20 miles per day in a relentless march to 90 degrees south. When a member of Amundsen's team suggested they could go faster up to 25 miles a day, Amundsen said no.

They needed to rest and sleep so as to continually replenish their energy. In contrast, Scott would sometimes drive his team to exhaustion on good days, and then sit in his tent and complain about the weather on bad days. In early December, Scott wrote in his journal about being stopped by a blizzard, quote, I doubt if any party could travel in such weather, end quote.

But when Amundsen faced conditions comparable to Scott's, he wrote in his journal, quote, It's been an unpleasant day, storm, drift, and frostbite, but we have advanced 13 miles closer to our goal, end of quote. Amundsen clocked in at the South Pole right on pace, having averaged 15 and a half miles per day. Amazing accomplishment. Like Amundsen and his team, Collins writes, the 10 Xers, the companies and leaders that are able to accomplish so much more than their competition, they and their companies use their 20-mile marches as a way to exert self-control, even when afraid or tempted by opportunity.

Having a clear 20-mile march focuses the mind, because everyone on the team knows the markers and their importance, they can stay on track. While it's not the only leadership message we found in our research, our book, Great by Choice, delineates fully six sets of findings, the 20-mile march is the crucial starting point.

So that's the end of the section I'll read from the Jim Collins article. So, if you were to search on the Internet and just look up the 20-mile march, you'll find countless articles and different commentary that's been written about it, and apply to different areas of life. In fact, I found out about this at work as I was talking with one of my colleagues, and we were talking about a long-range goal that we had to accomplish. He was talking about things that he was dealing with with his children, and how his mantra with his kids has always been the 20-mile march. It doesn't matter how long the goal is, how far out it is, whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish, it begins by figuring out what is that march, what is it that we need to accomplish day after day after day in order to make it to that goal, regardless of what the external factors might be.

This can apply to basically anything that we do in life. It's interesting, Jim Collins, the author whose article I was reading from, coined a phrase that he calls fanatical discipline. He used the term fanatical discipline as a type of focus that people want to have if they're going to achieve success, focusing on the things that they need to accomplish in their 20-mile march. This can apply to a wide variety of things that might be going on in our lives, whether it's completing our education, whether it's high school, whether it's trade school, whether it's university, and a long-range goal of getting through that education.

Perhaps it's holding a regular job, the fact that we need to show up at work every day, be there ready to work and ready to put in our time, whether we're feeling great or not, whether people are nice to us or not, so that we can support our families. It might be physical goals that we have in terms of keeping fit or losing weight. Even things like overcoming addictions, many of the common programs that are used are focused on these exact type of things. Every day, needing to renew your commitment and focus on the thing that needs to get done in that day. That's the way we work as human beings. Developing our spiritual lives is no different, and their disciplines and areas of focus that we can have and need to have on a regular, daily basis in order to keep that spiritual 20-mile march going. I'd like to dig into three elements of this as we think about 20-mile marching from a spiritual point of view, and just spend a little bit of time on each of these talking through them, what they mean for our spiritual lives. The three of those are endurance, discipline, and renewal. Endurance, discipline, and renewal. All three of these tie in to the example of Amundsen and what he had to accomplish as he was going through his expedition to the South Point. And as well, in our lives, as we move towards and try to achieve the goals that we have, whether they're goals for our spiritual lives or goals for our physical lives. First, let's talk about endurance for a little while. As pointed out in the article, both teams, as they were going towards their goals, faced similar sorts of obstacles.

They had to march 1,400 miles in sometimes blinding snow with crevices that could swallow not only a person, but a whole team of dogs in a sled. They talked about, in the accounts of this, how they would have to pick their way through some of these areas so they wouldn't fall into these crevices. Some of which it could take a day to get somebody out if you could even get them out, because some of them were so deep.

Gale force winds were something we already talked about, and the fact that even in the height of the summer, in December, temperatures of 20 below zero were not unusual. So unless you had the endurance and the preparation to deal with these extreme conditions, there was not a lot that you could do to survive. And in addition, the prospects of starvation were very real. The accounts of these expeditions talk about how they used an eight-month time period before they left on their expedition, and they would actually go out along the route that they were planning to go on, and they would leave caches of food along the way, every so many miles, so that on the way out, they would have some food that they could pick up so they didn't have to pack everything out. And on the way back in, as well, as they were running out of rations, they would have places where they could stop, where they had hidden food earlier and could replenish their food.

But endurance is a lot more than just the ability to live through an experience. What is it that you think about when you think of endurance?

You know, we might have different images come to mind. We've all seen the posters of, like, a rock standing in the middle of the surf, as the surf just keeps pounding in, and this rock that just stands there and remains the same.

And I'd like to maintain that endurance is very much like that because one of the things that's the key to endurance is not just living through a situation, because, as we know, there are many ways to get through a situation, productive ways and unproductive ways. And we probably all know of examples or people who've gone through very difficult situations and come through those situations, changed, and sometimes not in good ways. Some people go through very trying and difficult situations and they come out of those bitter, forever bitter and angry and unable to get over what it is that they've suffered through. Others, like these explorers, can go through those very same situations, and the way that they endure, they come through it actually stronger. And I think of examples like the Apostle Paul and what he wrote in the Epistles, where he talks about the fact that he dies daily when he... he talks about the fact that he considers suffering to be something that he glories in, he's happy to suffer because it gives him fellowship with Jesus Christ, and he's suffering for a good reason and a good cause. That's an example of endurance that I'm talking about, the attitude that carries through it of being able to continue to be strong, to have faith in God, and to continue to move forward, not being embittered by the experience. I've got a friend who's done a lot of work with a person who I think is a fantastic example of endurance as well. His name is Eric Weinmeyer. I don't know if any of you have heard of Eric Weinmeyer. He was the first blind man to climb Mount Everest. And this is back in Colorado. He started a foundation that's called No Boundaries that my friend is involved in, together with Eric. And what they do is they work with people with all kinds of disabilities. Veterans who've come back from the war, missing limbs, people who don't have their sight. In fact, a lady who was on, I think it's America's Got Talent, who became deaf and sang on that show and actually came through. And they've worked with a whole variety of people like this. And it's working on laying out challenges and obstacles that can be overcome by people, regardless of the things that they're suffering in their environment. And encouraging people to break through those barriers, to take away the boundaries that they have in their mind that they think constrain them from accomplishing things, and helping them to help them achieve those goals. I'd like to talk for a few minutes, though, about endurance, not as something that we need to focus on achieving by itself, but what are the things that cause endurance? How is it that Christian endurance is produced? Because it's one thing to just say we need to have endurance. But what we need to think about is what is endurance coming from? What are the causes? What are the environmental factors that can give us that ability to endure in the way that we need to? The first one I'd like to focus on is having a knowledge and understanding of our journey, and knowing that it will have hardship that has to be endured.

Again, if I go back to these explorers and think about what it was that they did in order to be able to endure their trip, it started with acknowledging the fact that they were going to be in extremely inhospitable conditions. They knew that they were going to spend weeks trekking a long distance in bitter weather, and they spent eight months of preparation doing this. I talked early about the food that they hid along their routes, that they would have that. They had eight months of preparation in their camp on the South Pole, and it talks in one of the accounts in detail about how the teams would spend time with their sleds, which had already been specially designed for what they were going to face. They used the time ahead of time, knowing the difficulty of the journey that was ahead of them, modifying their sleds, continuing to work with the runners, with the shape of the sleds. Amundsen's team also did something very interesting. They built compartments on the sleds, so that when they would stop for the night, they wouldn't have to unpack the entire sled. They could go to the sections of the sled that they needed, whether it was for supplies or camping gear, and the things that they needed, and they would go to those sections of the sled, pull out the things that they needed, without having to tear the whole thing apart, and take the time the next morning to put everything back together. So very careful preparation, knowledge and understanding of what it was that they were going to face. It's a little gross, maybe, to talk about it, but one of the other things they planned on was food in a very harshly practical way. Amundsen's team went in with something like 50 sled dogs. They came out with, I think, something like a dozen. And what they did in between, as harsh as it is, as part of their plan, along the way, they slaughtered some of their sled dogs, and they used them for their team for food, as well as for the other dogs. And it was one of the things that they actually planned, as how they would be able to sustain their journey and endure the conditions that they were in. Because when you think of the Antarctic, the South Pole, there's no vegetation, there's nothing growing, there aren't really any animals there, nothing else to live on except what you brought with you. Turn with me, if you would, to John 16, verse 33. Let's look at this in the context of our spiritual lives, in terms of knowing our journey and the hardships that we will have to endure.

John 16, we'll read verse 33. Here it's Jesus Christ speaking, and he says, These things I have spoken to you, talking to his disciples, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, because I have overcome the world. It's interesting, you know, we focus a lot on the promises that God has made. He's made a lot of fantastic promises for us.

But do we focus on the fact that one of the promises of God is that in this world and in this life we will have tribulation? It says it here very clearly, right out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, in terms of what he's promised. And so as we go into our spiritual lives, as we're on this journey, this trek that we're on, we do have to recognize in order to have endurance that we will have tribulations. It is part of the journey that we're going to have, and just like the explorers had to plan what it was that they were going to do, how they were going to survive, the difficulty that they would encounter, we need to be thinking about that ahead of time as well. Maybe we're in a good place in our lives right now. Maybe things are going well. We're not suffering with anything in particular, and that's great. But we have to recognize the fact that life has its ups and it has its downs, and we have to expect those things.

1 Peter 4 as well, we won't turn there, but it talks about the fact that we shouldn't think it's strange when we fall into fiery trials. Again, God, through the Bible, through His Word, is helping us to understand and be realistic about the conditions that we will face in our Christian life.

And this is why, especially when there are preachers and people out there who talk about things like a pure health and wealth gospel, you've probably all heard them, that say, simply call on God. Usually it includes the idea, give me some money, and everything's going to be great. Pray for a new car and you're going to have a new car. Pray for a new job and you're going to have a new job. Everything's going to go fantastic if you just commit yourself to God and give me some money. But what does that set us up for when difficulties come? And we see right here in the Bible it's promised that difficulties come.

And if we set our faith on the fact that if we do A and B, we will simply have a nice, easy, and comfortable time, we set ourselves up for disappointment and it becomes very difficult to endure our Christian lives when the expectations that we've set up turn out not to be true. Turn with me, if you will, to Luke 14. Luke 14. Think, for those who are baptized, most of you can probably remember reading this passage as you were preparing for baptism. Talking about counting the cost, knowing what it is that we'll face as Christians in the lives that we're taking on when we dedicate our lives to God and to Jesus Christ.

Luke 14. We'll start in verse 25. Talking here about Jesus Christ in verse 25 of Luke 14, it says, Now great multitudes went with him. And he turned and he said to them, If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Now this, I think we know, is using a figure of speech, it's using hyperbole, it's using exaggeration to make a point. So clearly, Jesus Christ is not saying we need to hate our parents, we need to reject them, it doesn't say that we need to hate our own lives in terms of the fact that we don't want to live.

He's making a point through exaggeration and saying, The most important thing, if you want to follow me, is my way. It comes before everything else in life because it lies at the center of it. All of the other things that happen spring outwards from that relationship with God. And then in verse 27 he says, Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

He's making here an allusion to crucifixion. As we recall, even when Jesus Christ was crucified, what the Romans would do after they beat people who were going to be crucified was they would take usually a cross piece or a piece of the cross or stake that they would be put up on, and they would require them to carry that from the place where they might have been beaten up to where they were going to be crucified. This was a very heavy piece of wood, often as happened with Jesus Christ, they would crumble under the weight of that.

So he's saying we have to remember there are going to be weights that we have to bear. There will be burdens that we will have to bear. For which of you in verse 28, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it? Lest after he's laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and he wasn't able to finish it.

We've probably all seen this. I remember in some of the cities where I've lived, you'll see the shell of a building that's built. And maybe it's been sitting there for ten years. There's some shopping malls that I can think of near us on the east side. You go by there, building's been put up, maybe not completely finished. It's just sitting there. Builders ran out of funds. They didn't plan ahead. Maybe they didn't think of contingencies of what would happen if the economy went down.

And there's this monument to their plans that were never finished because they weren't able to fully count the cost and do what was needed in order to complete the building that they were putting up. And in verse 31, what king, going to make war against another king, doesn't sit down first and consider whether he's able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the one is still a great way off, he'll send a delegation and ask conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has, cannot be my disciple.

So talking here, in terms of endurance, in terms of successfully being a disciple, the fact that we have to rationally and reasonably understand what it is that our Christian lives will entail. The challenges and the difficulties, also the good times that come out of it all, let's not just be negative about it, but we have to expect and understand, in order to have endurance, the things that we will suffer.

Secondly, in terms of producing endurance, is having an eye on the goal. First of all, having a goal, and then secondly, having our eye on it. As I think one of the sayings goes, if you don't know where you're going, you're never going to get there. In terms of setting goals, I think that probably sounds like a Yogi Berra saying he was good with those. But we need to have goals, things that we want to accomplish, and then we need to set our eyes on those goals and work towards them. If we're thinking of this 20-mile march, if we're just wandering aimlessly and going 20 miles, it's going to be kind of difficult to get anywhere. Turn with me in this context, if you would, to 2 Timothy 4. 2 Timothy 4. And we'll start in verse 5. Here it's Paul writing to Timothy, who was a much younger minister, and giving him advice as Paul's nearing the end of his ministry and his life. 1 Timothy 4. I'm sorry, 2 Timothy 4. And verse 5. Here Paul writes, Be watchful in all things. Endure afflictions. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. But look what he says after this. I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I've kept the faith. And there's laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved his appearing. And so you can see Paul, when you read in the other parts of his writing, especially the epistles, they're called the prison epistles, because he wrote them while he was imprisoned under Roman arrest. And he talks a lot about the goal that he has, what he's fighting for, what he's moving towards in terms of the goal of salvation. And you can see that he's able to endure all the things that he's going through, because he has a meaning for his life, he has a goal of God's kingdom and the reward that God has for him as what's out there in front of him. Certainly we need to have that as well in our lives. The other thing that we should think about as well, though, is what are the intermediate goals that we have before that? As humans, we need to have goals immediately within our lives as well, whether we think of it as goals for this month or this year, or over the next couple of years, things that we're wanting to accomplish. It's certainly great to have goals of things we want to accomplish in our physical lives. And I know many of us do have those in terms of things that we're trying to do. Losing weight, getting in shape, qualifying for a new job, goals in the relationships that we have in other people, things that we're trying to build into our marriages, relationships, perhaps, that we're trying to repair with other people. What are those goals that we have in our lives?

Having the focus on that goal, that outcome that we're looking for, can help to build the endurance that we need. Going back to our explorers for a moment, the story of them, Amundsen, who was the winner, he would check his compass daily. And he charted his course of his 15 to 17 miles a day, thinking about covering one degree on the compass every day. And he would look at that every day so he could see the progress that he was making towards his goal.

He knew exactly where he wanted to go. He knew exactly the pace that he had to keep. And he was very focused on keeping that pace. And he had one single goal. What's very interesting about his rival, Scott, Scott was a bit of a scientist as well. And Scott didn't have only a single goal of making it to the South Pole. He also had a goal of bringing back scientific samples. And so on some of the days that they were out there marching and trying to make it to the South Pole, he would stop and go around and explore and collect rocks and other scientific samples that he needed to get, because he didn't have a singular goal. And there's a point that's talked about in one of the accounts where he was five days away from his next food store and he only had five days of food. Now that sounds like a fairly dire situation where you'd be pretty focused on marching five days and getting to your next food store. But during that day, five days away, his party covered an additional seven to eight miles, collecting 35 pounds of rocks for scientific study before they went back on the path and tried to make their way.

Keep in mind, this is the party that, in the end, frozen and starving, died out there on the pole. He didn't have a singular goal that he was focused on. He was distracted by other things that came into the way of his path.

And he sidetracked to do those things at the risk of his life and, in the end, resulting in the death both of himself and his party.

Turn with me, if you will, to Hebrews 12.

Again, along the lines of having a clear goal and having it in mind. Hebrews 12, we'll read verses 1 through 3 and verse 11. Hebrews 12 comes right after the account in Hebrews 11 of the heroes of faith, where it talks about the accounts of different godly people throughout history and the things that they did, the things that they experienced and how they lived through them through their faith in God. In Hebrews 12, verse 1, it says, Therefore, understanding all those stories of these heroes of faith, we also, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, talking again about these people that are talked about in Hebrews 11, says, And what does he lay out in the next verse is the key to doing that.

So Jesus Christ himself set this same example, the things that he was willing to suffer because of the goal that he had, because of the end result that he saw, including all of us being called into his family as sons and daughters.

So again, he's pointing out very clearly here a key to endurance, focusing on the goal and what's out there in front of us. And then in verse 11, So again, what he's saying, if you paraphrase that, is, look, you're going to have difficult times. You're going to suffer trials, and therefore you're learning, but think of what that's building in you. It's building the fruit of the Spirit. It's strengthening you and God. And knowing those things, knowing those goals that you're trying to achieve, makes it possible to endure the things that you have to endure.

Last piece I want to focus on in terms of causing endurance, what is it that builds endurance is, knowing that the goal is attainable through God. Knowing that the goal is attainable through God. You know, it's difficult, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for these polar explorers, because they didn't know for sure if they were going to be able to make it. And they were able to drive themselves forward towards that goal anyways, and they relied on their preparation. They relied on all of the maps that they'd drawn out, the way they charted out their course, the way that they'd prepared their equipment. But they knew that flukes in the weather, miscalculations, if they'd turned the wrong way, if they made mistakes in how they had calculated their routes, that they might not make it. The thing that we can be completely optimistic and insured about is the fact that we're not in that situation. We're in a situation where we know 100% that through God we can succeed in the journey that we have and the goals that we have in our spiritual lives. Turn with me, if you will, to Romans 8, just one of the places where there are reminders of these things. And again, in terms of causing endures, the fact that we know that through God and through Jesus Christ we can and we will survive and make it to the goal that He set before us through His help can give us strength and the ability to endure anything that we're going through. Romans 8. Let's start in verse 28. Very familiar verse for most people. We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Something we can put absolute trust in, and that's something that can give us the strength and the power to endure, whatever it is that we're going through in our lives. As we give it to God, as we call on Him to help us through those things. And then verses 37 through 39, where Paul goes on and says, So the first element of endurance is we're going through 20 mile marches in our life.

And let's think about, remember these three elements that help to cause endurance in our lives. Knowing and being realistic about what it is that the journey that we're on. Knowing at the same time and understanding that we have a goal, and the more that we keep our focus on that goal, and what it is that we're working for and enduring for, the easier it is to do that. And then lastly, knowing that God absolutely promises to sustain us through all of the things that we face in life.

Let's talk about the second element for a few minutes of discipline. Discipline. The idea of the 20 mile march at its base is one of discipline and perseverance. I mentioned earlier how Jim Collins uses the word fanatical, fanatic discipline. Now, in a religious sense, we tend not to like to use the word fanatic for good reason. But he's talking about the type of discipline that you have to have in order to achieve whatever the goal is that you set before you.

And what he found in studying these people who were incredibly successful, in this case, in the world of business, was these people were very disciplined and focused and knew the fact that every day, when they got up, there were certain things that they were going to have to do. Their team, their company, the group that they were working with, was going to have to march a certain distance every day.

Externalities were not going to matter in getting that march done. How the leader felt that morning was not going to matter. Whether everybody showed up to work that day was not going to matter. Whether there was a cataclysmic event that happened in the business world, in the economy, in the country, was not going to matter. Because, relentlessly and with fanatic discipline, they were focused on every day accomplishing what they knew they needed to get done in order to get to their goal.

Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Corinthians 9. We see these same sorts of things laid out in the Bible. And it's a challenge. It's difficult. We're all humans. And it's very difficult as we're suffering through different things, as we're dealing with emotions, as we're dealing with things with the relationships that we have. It's very difficult every day to get up and do the things that we need to do.

But I think as we look at the periods in our life, when we're accomplishing the things that we need to, when we feel like we're making forward motion, those are probably things that are a common denominator as you look at your life. The ability to get done the things to, first of all, know what the things are that you need to get done every day, and then to be able to get them done, and to do it because you know you have to, and to persevere through any difficulties that might be in the way.

1 Corinthians 9, 24-27. Here Paul's using the example of athletes. Some people think he was talking about the Olympic Games and some of these analogies that he used. 1 Corinthians 9, 24. Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things.

Now if they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty. Thus I fight, not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body, and I bring it into subjection. Lest when I preach to others, I myself should be disqualified. What Paul is saying here is just like an elite athlete that knows exactly what their training regimen is in order to be in the physical condition they need to be in for whatever it is that they prepared for. Talking in verse 26 about beating the air, many think it's talking about a boxer. Those of you who remember the movie Rocky can remember how he would have those raw eggs that he would break and he'd drink them down as part of his training regimen. He'd get out and run through the streets and go into the meat cooler and beat up on the cow carcasses and the whole thing. But that's the type of thing he's talking about. Knowing what it is that we need to do and then doing it relentlessly with focus every day. He's talking about here using the analogy of athletes who have that goal, they know the race that they're going to run in, they know the competition that they're going to be in, whatever it might be, and they focus day after day after day on doing what they know they need to do in order to reach the goal. Do any of you have friends who've run a marathon or maybe run a marathon yourself? If you talk to them, in fact, or a bike race, for example, they'll talk about the program that leads up to running a marathon or riding 100 miles on your bike. And if you talk to any of these people, there's a very set regimen that you go through for weeks ahead of a race like that, if not months. And it has a set number of miles that you accomplish every day and every week, going up and then backing off to gather strength before you finally run the race. And people who are doing that will go through that regimen. They'll know every day what it is that they need to accomplish, how far it is they need to run or bike in order to be prepared. We use the analogy, and we see it often in the Bible, of nature as well. I think of it in terms of the plants that are out on my deck. I learned a bit or less than a couple of years ago when my wife was gone for a couple weeks, that I can't just catch up on watering on the weekends. Plants don't really like that so much. But how much of the rest of our lives is that way as well? And somehow, within ourselves, when we're trying to accomplish something, too often we think we can catch up on the watering on the weekends, don't we? I know I need to do this today, but I'm not feeling so good. I'll wait until the weekend, and I'll just catch up and do it then. Probably preparing for tests in school, writing a paper is a good analogy as well that we've all gone through at some point in our lives, right? We know it's best if we work on it a little bit at a time every day, but what do we often do? We leave it until the night before. And then we think we can just cram it all in and still understand what's going on. Most of the time, that's not a good formula. Knowing what it is that we need to do and focusing on it on a day-to-day basis. Philippians 3. Philippians 3 will read verses 12 through 16.

Philippians 3 verses 12 through 16. Here Paul writes, saying, Not that I've already attained, or am already perfected, but I press on, using that same analogy of perseverance, of pushing himself, of knowing what needs to be done on a day-to-day basis, I press on, that I may lay a hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I don't count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward to those things that are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God and Jesus Christ. Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us still walk by the same rule, and let us be of the same mind, talking about pressing forward, relentlessly pushing day after day after day, doing what we know we need to do when we get up to achieve our goals, whether they're the spiritual goals that we have, as we heard in the sermonette, making sure that we're turning our minds to God, searching His Word, praying to Him, and the physical goals that we have. It's part of our regular life as well, education, career, relationships, our families, that we're accomplishing things in our life and knowing what it is that we need to do day after day after day in order to keep our lives moving in the right direction. So this is an unwillingness in the end as we focus on this perseverance, this fanatic discipline, an unwillingness to allow the other things that are happening in our lives to stop us from doing the things that we need to do. And I know when I look at my own life, it's something I always need to think about as well, because I've recognized long ago that when there are things that are really important to me, I always find a way to get it done. They're not always the things that I need to get done, but they're the things that I want to get done. And I often ask myself, well, if I can do those things that I want to do for fun, then why can't I focus on the things that I need to do as well? And make sure I'm getting those done. And it's that discipline of not focusing on the externalities, how we feel that day, what else is going on, the things that can get in the way. But realizing these things need to happen, they're important, and I need to simply put them at the top of my priority list. And God can give us the strength to do those things.

Let's go then to the last section, which is renewal. So in addition to discipline, perseverance, in addition to endurance, we need to think about renewals. There's a flip side to this idea of the 20-mile march. And I think it's important to recognize that, because as I mentioned in the earlier example, Amundsen's fanatical discipline went in both directions. It stopped them from sitting inside their tent when there was a storm outside, and it caused them to push forward and to achieve at least the minimum distance they need.

But that same discipline also said, you know what? Today we've gone far enough. We've made our 17 miles. The weather is clear. The sun is out. Let's rest. And having that discipline on both sides of things, to know when it was enough, and it was time to stop in order to store up energy, to renew oneself, and be ready for the next day's march, was very important.

And there are examples there, again, as we talked about with Scott, about the fact that he would push his people. Sometimes they'd arrive in camp, and the team would think that they were going to set up for the night. He'd look at the weather outside and say, you know what? We can make another five miles. And imagine the morale of people who've already gone maybe 30 miles, and now their leader says, you know what? Let's go another five. And they never knew what to expect, because they didn't know exactly how he would feel, how far he'd want to go.

And they'd get whipsawed, and it demoralized them at times. Let's talk briefly about two areas of renewal. First, spiritual renewal, and then physical renewal. First, on the side of spiritual renewal. Mark 6, let's read verses 31 and 32. Mark 6, 31 and 32. Jesus Christ exercised a discipline very similar to this. Mark 6 is an account that's written shortly after they were feeding the multitudes.

And in verse 31, Jesus said to the disciples in Mark 6, Come aside by yourself to a deserted place, and rest awhile. For there were many coming and going, and they didn't even have time to eat. So they departed to a deserted place, in the boat, by themselves. Now what I find interesting here is, with Jesus Christ, one part of you would think that he would say, there's more hungry people here. There are more sick people here.

There are more hurting people here. We're going to stay here all night long if we have to, and we're going to take care of all of them. But he didn't do that. For whatever reason, he saw that it was enough. He'd accomplished what he needed to and what he should have for that day. And he also laid out here specifically to the disciples, we need to rest for awhile. Because he knew not only for his own good, but he knew for their good, as his disciples, that they needed to rest.

And if they pushed and pushed and pushed until they had no energy left, in the short term, maybe they would have accomplished more, but in the long run, they would accomplish less. And so he was willing, even like we're talking about in this 20-mile march, to say, it's enough for today, we've accomplished what we need to accomplish. Now let's rest for a while, let's renew ourselves, and then let's move forward. Think about the Sabbath in this context as well. Genesis 1, verse 31. Let's read Genesis 1.31, and we'll move into the first few verses of Genesis 2.

God shows this exact same attitude when he set up the Sabbath day. Of course, Genesis 1 is the creation account, and as God ends every day of the creation account, he says it's good. And I can identify with that. I don't know what it's like for you. I work in a job where things are very intangible. At the end of the day, I can't really see that I've accomplished anything. I've made phone calls, I've written memos, I've moved things from one place to another on the computer.

But there's nothing that I can really lay my eyes on. And sometimes the most therapeutic thing for me is to go and do something really mindless, like weeding the garden. And my wife can attest to this. After a Sunday afternoon when I might be weeding the garden, I'll wander by the window, and I love looking out at a garden that I've weeded and said, wow, that looks different. My back might ache a little bit, my neck might be a little bit sore, but you know what? I can see I did something. That was really good.

I like that. The garden looks cleaner. And I think of that when I read this example of God as well. He sat back after every day of creation and said, wow, this is good. And what did he do after day six? Genesis 1.31. God saw everything that he'd made, all the days of creation he'd gone through, and indeed, it wasn't only good.

He said it was very good. Hence, the evening and the morning were the sixth day. And 2, verse 1, You can picture God sitting back. Now God is spirit. He doesn't need physical renewal. He doesn't need spiritual renewal. He's God. But he set an example out there for us, and he gave us this day as a day to step back, to renew ourselves spiritually. And it's worth reflecting on when we think about spiritual renewal. How is it that we use the Sabbath? How is the Sabbath different for us than other days of the week?

I know for people who are retired, it's a different pace because you're not going to work every day. Think about it qualitatively. How is the Sabbath for you different than other days of the week? I mean, aside from the fact that we don't work. That's kind of the going-in proposition. We're not going to work on the Sabbath.

But what else do we do to make that day different in terms of it being a day of renewal? Because if the rest of what we do is the same as what we do every other day, I'd maintain we're not really renewing much of anything. We sit back on the Sabbath and we're reading the same books that we're reading all week long. We're sitting back, we're catching up on the TV shows that we haven't watched during the week.

We're going out with the friends that we didn't get a chance to go out with Wednesday night or Thursday night. What is it that's different on the Sabbath that's going to renew us? I think we know that as we're at the Sabbath, the rest is a spiritual and a physical rest. It's time to take in things from God that maybe we didn't have time to do in the depth that we wanted to during the week.

It's time to reflect in a way that we don't during the week because we're rushing from one priority to the next, giving ourselves a chance to have that renewal. And when you think about it in a way, God gives us equivalent to the 20-mile march.

He gives us the six-day march, right? At the end of the six days, he says, you know what? It's been enough. Let's step back for a minute and let's recharge. Let's take stock. Let's think about where we're going. Let's recalibrate, and then let's get back on the road and get back with that march when Sunday morning comes along. Again, spiritual renewal. Let's think about physical renewal as well. I think of it often in terms of the creative process. I'm sure if you talk to Mark, if you talk to other people who are in any creative line of business, people who have to do a lot of writing, a lot of presenting, people who compose, what is it that many of them will tell you?

It's doing it a bit at a time, and the way the mind works is really incredibly interesting to me. The best advice that I got when I was in college was if you're writing a paper, just spend a little bit of time, write down the ideas, set it down, and then come back to it and take a break. And your mind just crunches away in the background on these types of things. I find it the same way if I'm writing a sermon, by presentation at work, and using that 20-mile march principle, taking bits of time, come home, if I've got a sermon that Sabbath, every night I'm going to spend at least 15-20 minutes, just looking at it, adding a few notes, modifying a few things, thinking a little bit further about it.

And the mind just continues to work with it, as you pray about it, it all starts to come together as a whole. Similarly, from a physical point of view, then, the rest of it, if you work out, for example, physically, most books that you'll read will talk about how the body goes through those cycles, and you break down muscles, and you build them back up again, and you have to give them cycles and time to rest in between.

It's something that God has built into us physically, and we need that time of physical renewal. Some of it is simply having leisure time. We see the example, again, of God sitting back at the end of His creation, the work that He did in making everything that He made, and having a chance to sit back and say, wow, this is really good.

Turn with me, if you will, in this context, to Ecclesiastes. We'll read Ecclesiastes 3, verses 12 and 13. Ecclesiastes 3, verses 12 and 13. Here Solomon is going back, and he's musing about life and looking at things. Ecclesiastes 3, in verse 12, he says, I know nothing is better for them, talking about people who are laboring, all of us, than to rejoice and to do good in their lives, and that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor, because it's the gift of God.

So talking here about the fact that even though, yes, it's a virtue to work hard, it's also time at some point to say enough to sit back and to physically renew yourself, to enjoy the things that your hard work has brought, and in the right sense, to just sit back and have a good time. There's nothing wrong with a Christian to laugh, to have fun, to have great relationships with people, and to have a good time, as long as it's done within the boundaries of God's law, which, let's face it, are pretty wide.

There's a lot of good fun we can have without sinning in the process. So as we think about how it is that we renew ourselves, I encourage everyone to think about that. How is it that we renew ourselves spiritually, from day to day, turning to God as we go through our daily march, and also in our use of the Sabbath as a time that God has given us as a time for spiritual renewal? And also, how is it that we renew ourselves physically? So as we conclude, we talk today about the 20-mile march, about the examples of endurance, of discipline, and renewal that are embedded within that idea of a 20-mile march.

The question I want to ask in wrap-up is for everyone to think about, what is your journey? What are your goals? If you don't have any, I would encourage you to take some time and make sure you put some together. Spiritual goals, in terms of what you want to accomplish. We read about the fruit of the Spirit. We read about the gifts of the Spirit.

There are many things that we can do to make sure we're focused on the things that we want to develop. I've got a good friend of mine. I saw him a month or two ago. He happens to be an elder in the church as well. He was all fired up. He said, I've really been focused on the fact that I need to develop a stronger prayer life. He's always very goal-oriented. He said, I've set it out this year.

My goal is that I need to develop a stronger prayer life. I sat back and thought, that's really good. That's encouraging to see. He's focused on something in his own spiritual development that he needs to work on. He laid out exact things that he was doing in his 20-mile march, figuratively speaking, on a day-to-day basis, in order to build a stronger prayer life. What are the goals that we have in a spiritual sense? What are the obstacles, the things that we'll need to endure?

What's the discipline that we need to exercise? How will we drive renewal as we meet those goals? Likewise, from a physical point of view, whether it's our relationships with other people that we might need to repair or strengthen, things that we want to accomplish educationally or on a job, or other things in our physical lives, the same types of things can apply. So as we think about the rest of our Sabbath, as we think about the weeks coming along, I encourage everyone to think about the journeys, the treks that we're going on in our lives.

We're not going to explore anything as physically exciting, probably as a South Pole, but we've got all kinds of incredible things happening in all of our lives. And so I'd encourage everyone to think about what is your 20-mile march? What is it that you need to accomplish on a day-to-day basis, and how will you do it? Hope you all have a great Sabbath!