Will you finish strong, without regrets?

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. (1 Corinthians 9:24-25). ESV

Starting the race is easy. It’s finishing the race that is difficult!

My new favorite writer is Washington D.C. Pastor Mark Batterson. Insightful, inspiring, and challenging that's Mark.

Here are just a few of his book titles:

Wild Goose Chase: Reclaiming the Adventure of Pursuing God
The Id: True you
Primal: A quest for the lost soul of Christianity
In a Pit with a lion on a snowy day.

When I think of the challenge of " Finishing Strong", I am reminded of something Mark wrote, and his thinking as always takes the reader to a place of contemplation, where one must face squarely the decision to remain where you are or believe God for something more:

Here is a challenge from the heart of this writer:

There are the regrets of action and regrets of inaction. A regret of action is doing something you wish you hadn’t done. A regret of inaction is not doing something that you wish you had done. Let me put it in theological terms. Actions regrets are the result of sins of commission. Inaction regrets are the result of sins of omission.

I think the church has fixated on sins of commission long enough. They are easier to quantify. But the greatest regrets at the end of our lives won’t be the things we did wrong. It will be not doing the right things—things we could have, should have, and would have done.

Action regrets taste bad, but inaction regrets leave a bitter aftertaste that lasts a lifetime. Inaction regrets haunt us because they leave us asking what if. We are left to wonder how our lives would have been different had we taken the risk or seized the opportunity.

What if we had chased the dream instead of running away? Somehow our lives seem incomplete. Failing to take a risk is almost like losing a piece of the jigsaw puzzle to your life. It leaves a gaping hole. When we get to the end of our lives, our greatest regrets will be the missing pieces. That conviction is backed up by the research of two social psychologists named Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec. Their research found that time is a key factor in what we regret.

Over the short term, we tend to regret our actions. But over the long haul, we tend to regret inaction's. Their study found that over the course of an average week, action regrets outnumber inaction regrets 53% to 47%. But when people look at their lives as a whole, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets 84% to 16%.

What action (actions, positive things to build into your life) do you need to take today, so that when your time on earth draws to a close, you will look back without regrets...because you will have finished strong?