One of the most dangerous things that ever occurs in a Christian's life is when that Christian becomes preoccupied with looking at himself.

You know, even in the scripture, the Bible doesn't tell us to look at the Holy Spirit.

Some Christians just look at what the Holy Spirit's doing.

That's wrong, too.

You focus on Christ, 2nd Corinthians 318, and the Holy Spirit will change you into his image.

But you need to be looking at Christ.

Always, always, always, always focusing on Christ.

Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

What is it that pushes an athlete to spend years hitting the weight room,

doing countless drills, running for miles, and spending hours of intense strategizing? The answer has to be dedication. If someone trains that hard for the fleeting glory of an athletic prize,

how much more dedicated should you be

to train for the ultimate spiritual prize? What should you be willing to sacrifice to pursue Christ

like you should? Well, today John MacArthur will take you to the gym, so to speak, and show you

how to progress further in your spiritual training than you ever thought possible.

Follow along as we continue John's message called Run for Your Life.

We're coming to Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3, really, and 4 just kind of touching the last two verses.

The Holy Spirit apparently was well aware of the fact that good teaching,

teaching where there is learning going on, boils down to effective use of figures of speech.

We need to have illustrations and figures of speech to help us understand what somebody's

communicating. And so in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit very frequently

makes use of multiple figures of speech. And in particular, there are many, many of them

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