Now, Run Your Race!

No one lives an individual life all by themselves, on an island.  Every day our actions will either be influenced by someone or our actions will influence someone. 

Over the weekend our family watched the movie Secretariat. 

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What a stunning, nerve recking movie, about a racing horse!  What impacted me the most were the words by Christopher Chenery to his daughter, Penny Chenery Tweety, owner of Secretariat, “He has run his race, now you run your Race!”  

Isn’t that so true!  I must run my Race.  People and circumstances, decision and reactions will work in on me from all sides, but I have to make a sound decision every moment of every day, to only run my race, to the best of my ability.  I can watch other people running their race, learn from their mistakes and ask advice from people on how to run my race, but at the end of the day, it is my race and I alone am responsible for the way I run my race. 

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I have to focus on my race and forget about people around me running their race. I can never look at another, and try to run my race like they do. Never try to compare my race with another.  God has appointed for each of us to run our own race.

That is why I cannot live my life without my God and Heavenly Father, who is Good!  My God is the only one for whom I run my race.  The only One I can put my hope in to carry me through my race. My Heavenly Father will never allow anything above what I can handle to come my way and on that basis I can run my race and look forward to the reward at the end.

The past ten days I got hammered from various directions - close friends, total strangers  and extended family.  I had to fight a spiritual battle almost every moment of the day, but the biggest of all, I had to fight the battle within myself.  The battle to justify myself against these people.  For the first time I understood no battle in the spirit, will ever be won, through retaliation.  Jesus Himself gave us this example.

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And how great the victory every time I win the spiritual battle agains the Enemy of my soul, when I in humility choose the lower path and let God, trust God.

I’ve also learned so much about hurting people, what caused their pain and the way they choose to run their race in this life. Fair enough they may believe they have reason for the race they choose to run. A race that takes them on a destructive path, far away from the only hope and salvation there is for mankind! But into each one of us God implanted a sense of a Godly authority.  To run a race for the One, for whom we are created.

You could have been hurt by people, and because of that choose to run a race for your own destruction, but even in such a choice only you will reap the consequences of such a race. God is there for all people and in every situation we can choose to run a race for His glory!  I fervently remember the little book I read years ago by Stormy Omartian and the testimony of Joyce Meyer. Both of them, examples of great women who rose above the hurt and pain of their circumstances and chose to run their race for God!  

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I deliberately choose to run my race for God!  He and He alone is my audience and with God’s grace I will not allow outside people or inside circumstances to influence the way I run and keep me from winning the prize.

With love

Linnie

 1 Therefore 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, 2 looking 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. 

Hebr. 12:1-2