Run the Race with Endurance

Meet my new Brooks Running shoes. They are a tool to help me run the race God has set before me with great endurance.

This verse in Hebrews reminds me that a great cloud of witnesses surrounds us, and we are to lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely. WOW! 

A couple real humdingers in that reality, wouldn’t you say? 

First of all, think about it for a moment. The power of being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We have seen time and time again, faithful people (men and women) that have gone before us throughout history with faith so grand it’s almost impossible to articulate. 

And yet, isn’t that the point. 

God is so grand that He’s impossible to fully understand or articulate His magnificence completely due to our limited glossary of words in the attempt. He has boundless love and is never restricted by time. He’s all-knowing and always present and constant. God thought of you and me before He spoke this world into existence for such a time as this. YES…for such a time as this! Knowing that alone makes me want to level up in my faith, how about you?

Secondly, the real humdinger. Is there something that “clings” so closely that it keeps you from the later part of this Hebrews verse. You know, the part about fixing your eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Well, truth be told. Each of us possesses some sort of nasty clingy sin that trips us up and prevents the full flow of the Holy Spirit from moving in and through our lives, magnifying and glorifying our Heavenly Father as He deserves. 

What is clinging to your soul? Clogging the Holy Spirit flow.

If you are anything like me, I get a little tripped up sometimes on how things are suppose to look. It can be a perpetual perfection trip with momentary obsessive compulsive actions that cling closer to my soul than realized. It’s in those moments that I’m alone with God and He gently reveals the clingy truth, always with grace and mercy, but hard to stomach, nonetheless. 

The funny thing is, though, despite those perfectionism tendencies, when I get outside of that locked-in design of how things are “suppose to look”, I begin to see the beauty in God’s epic design. The one that has ebbs and flows of people, personalities, and practices that create an artistic expression. A little bit like my new running shoes. 

When I first opened the box to my new shoes, they were not what I expected. They weren’t matchy-match like I would have liked. But, the more I looked at them, walked and ran in them, the more I appreciated their uniqueness and yet complimentary expression of one another. 

That is how were should appreciate one another as well. To see our uniqueness in Christ and how it compliments one another’s individual uniqueness. God certainly has a sense of humor. So much so that he’ll use anything, even a pair of running shoes to help increase understanding and faith.

May we all see from His point of view and act upon it with great courage. Get outside of our comfort zone and flow in His creativity, timing, and love. This certainly helps to level up in our faith. Oh, how Jesus has shown us the way time and time again and The Way is Jesus.