Last Sunday came news of the unexpected death of a beloved preacher in Edgewater, Fla., Doug Dodd. Dodd had polio as a child and had reportedly been experiencing a great deal of pain in recent months.

In thinking about him—I didn’t know him at all outside of one phone conversation and hearing him give a sermon once at a Bible conference—I looked on his church’s website (www.floridagrace.com) for a study I might download and use to remember him by. Out of a long list, I pulled up one from March 5, entitled, “Refocusing for the Future.”

Here’s an outtake I’ve edited and retooled a little here and there:

From time to time you need to re-focus—you need to re-think things—and we need to run with purpose, run with power, run with pain sometimes, run with God’s perspective. . . Sometimes we’ve got to suffer through things. So we have pain.

I want to go through a list of some of the things we lose focus on because of the world that we live in:

The acquisition of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by both terrorists and rogue nations is perhaps one of the greatest threats to our national security.

U.S. intelligence officials have focused their attention on Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Sudan, Pakistan, North Korea, and their attempts at weapons proliferation.

They’ve kept a close watch on Russia and China, which are key suppliers of technology and components of weaponry to these countries.

The rise of Islam. The Muslim faith is becoming an increasingly volatile catalyst in today’s international scene. It’s become of paramount importance for us to understand the origin, nature and agenda of Islam.

Although there are many peace-loving Muslims, the truth about Islam is exactly the opposite of what you hear on the news. Most Americans believe Islam is a religion of peace and that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

In our public schools, we teach our children a doctrine of tolerance, and in some schools some kids are even required to memorize passages from the Koran. While in comparison, Islamic children are taught America is ‘The Evil Satan, The Infidel,’ and that we are the enemy.

The rise of the European super-state is another thing that grabs our attention. Over the last few years, we’ve watched closely as the European Union has emerged as a growing world power. Bulgaria and Romania are set to join the E.U. in January of 2007. And both Croatia and Turkey have begun negotiations for that membership, bringing their numbers up to that number that we’re looking for the rise of the Antichrist—the Magog invasion.

Many experts believe that large-scale confrontation between Israel and its neighbors could be on the near horizon, and you see that in the news almost every day. Over the past year or so, partly as a consequence of the war in Iraq, Russia has been carefully cultivating a relationship with Turkey, Iran and Syria, building a new axis of power based on these three countries.

Then there’s the rise of the Far East. China has become a global power in recent years. China has purchased, borrowed or stolen technology which has catapulted it into a military industrial complex with capabilities that are now going into the high-tech arena. China has announced plans to launch 100 surveillance satellites and has unveiled a new class of ballistic missile submarines. The Chinese military is preparing for a war with the U.S.; a war which its own commanders have said is inevitable.

Biotech and global pestilence. According to the National Institute of Health, infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death worldwide, and the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Diseases once thought to be obsolete and have again become a global threat, and in recent years new pathogens have emerged, some of which carry antibiotic-resistant genes that are mutations enabling them to go across different species.

Global religion. It may seem difficult for us to imagine the world being united under one ruler or one religion, especially with the bloody ethnic battles that take place all across our planet. However, the violence caused by religious and culture conflicts could in fact be the catalyst that brings about this drastic change. The desire for world peace, the deterioration of moral values in the Western world, the restriction of religious freedom in America, and the continued persecution of Christians in other parts of the world, could pave the way for the emergence of a global religion.

The Roman Catholic Church, one of the wealthiest, most powerful institutions on Planet Earth today, has almost one billion followers. That’s approximately 20 percent of the planet. The Roman Catholic Church is poised to become the vehicle for the final ecumenical movement and union of all religions. Many commentators believe that the religion of the Antichrist and of atheism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and the New Age, will be hammered together through the Roman Catholic Church.

In the face of all this that would blur our vision, we must be careful to stay on course. Weapons proliferation, Islam, the E.U., China, cloning, and all the rest don’t really matter in the light of our calling in Christ. They only serve to obscure the real question of this life which is, ‘What about the souls of men?’ We are in a race, and we need to run that race with confidence, with purpose, with power—with God’s perspective.

The Apostle Paul understood that if we’re not serving because it’s what we love to do, we still need to serve. You and I have been ‘allowed of God,’ as Paul puts it, to participate in what God’s doing, and that ought to cause us to want to have joy, and gladness, and thankfulness because He’s allowed us to do that.

I like what Paul says in I Cor. 9:22, and I underline it, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”

You know why? Because Paul knows what’s out in eternity. He understands that. Weapons proliferation, China, biological terror, terrorists—all those are things designed to get our attention off of the real things that are going on. It doesn’t matter whether this planet is here tomorrow or not if we haven’t taken opportunity to stand in defense and confirmation of the Gospel and we lose our focus.

Paul goes on to say in this passage, “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.”

There’s a process people go through in running races, and other athletic competition, of training their bodies to peak performance. Paul sees the value in training and keeping our focus on the things that are important. He knows what the benefits are. He knows what the values are. He says, “I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”

God would have us to run the race with confidence and with power. Not with our power, but with His, by allowing that indwelling of Jesus Christ to be the issue. We are to run it with purpose, knowing and understanding what’s going on out in the ‘ages to come.’