[Steve Myers] How has your year ended? Hopefully it ended very well. I was reminded of this when I heard a coach talk about his players. Now, his team hadn't done very well this season. And so they asked him, "Well, what are you doing?" He said, "I'm watching for players who are finishing the season on top, who are ending the season well." In other words, they're giving their all even though the overall team hasn't done that well. And I got to thinking about that for myself. No matter what's happening around me, am I still giving my all so that I am ending well? Is that something that we should take to heart in our lives? Are we finishing the race? Are we ending the season in the way we need to?

[Darris McNeely] Yeah, you know, one of my favorite things to do is occasionally pull out a few video clips from the Olympics, some of the Olympic races that have been run, whether it's a marathon or a maybe a 400 where a runner was injured or was just trying with all of his heart and might to finish. There's one from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. There was another one from the Barcelona Olympics just recently I was watching. And you really get motivated and inspired when you see that despite the obstacles these runners intended to finish the race. And I think the one about the marathon fits sometimes what we find in Scripture very well, that is it important that we end and that we finish the race no matter what the setbacks are along the way.

[Steve Myers] That's right. In fact Paul wrote about this to God's Church in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 9:24. Here's what he says there, 1 Corinthians 9 - in fact it's interesting how he ties it into obtaining the prize by winning that race. He says, "Don't you 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 so he says you better make sure that you're going to run that race and end well, that we want to obtain that prize. And you put that into a spiritual context, that's what God wants for us. He wants us to get up, run that race, finish it, and win that prize.

[Darris McNeely] Yeah, if you've got a finish line, you've got to cross that line to end the race, to have competed well, even to win it, but to finish, that's the key.

[Steve Myers] So with the calendar year just past, 2013 now on the way, let's run the race so that we can obtain that prize.

[Darris McNeely] That's BT Daily. Join us next time.