Running the Race Before You

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here we are! The start of a new year! Hopefully you've taken some time to reflect on the last 12 months... What you need to learn from and remember and what you might need to just leave in the past. But now is the time to fix our minds and focus on the future! What do you think God might have in store for you in 2015? 

My wife and I enjoy speculating about what the future may bring - we call it "scenario building". Over the years it has been cause for many laughs because we never seem to get things just right. God always finds ways to show up and move in our lives in ways that we never expected. For example, one year ago today, I in no way thought that I would now have this magnet on my car...

While I had started running the year before, we never would have thought I would complete a half-marathon in 2014! It took God moving - through one of our daughters and through a good friend - to get me to even consider, let alone train for and compete in, a race of this distance! But I did it, with God's help, and it became one of the highlights of my year.

I believe we are called to prepare for what we may believe may come our way. We must also expect the unexpected. And whatever it is we may face, we are certainly called to approach it with the following mindset...

"1Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebews 12:1-2 NKJV)

We are to approach what lies before us with perseverance and endurance. We need to stick with it and stay in it for the long haul. If God has brought a situation to us - or us to a situation - then our responsibility is to look to Jesus and emulate the way He approached his life and what his father had planned for him. Let us remember too, especially when things get difficult, that Jesus told us the following, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.”(Mark 10:27 NKJV)

We won't often be able to predict what the next 12 months will bring. We know there will be trials and we know there will be successes. We know there will be times of sadness and times of great joy. The specifics, however, do not necessarily matter. We are called to  persevere through the spiritual lows to the same extent we celebrate the spiritual highs. And keeping your focus on Jesus through it all gives you the strength you'll need to run the race.

Thank you for continuing to read the words I put to "paper" in this space. I greatly appreciate your support and encouragement. Blessings to you all in the year ahead. I pray that you may hear His words more clearly this year than ever before and that you are blessed mightily when you act upon them.