The Privilege of Serving a God Who Prepares and Trains us for the Race

There is a race I’m called to run and see to completion. There is a race I’m called to run.

As someone who has never truly loved running, it is hard for me to embrace the reality that I do have a race to run.

When I first started running, I could not do so for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds I thought that I was going to go into cardiac arrest. I would have to stop, slow down, and walk.

Over time, I learned how to breathe correctly, stride correctly. Through practice and persistent endurance, I got better. I can now run 7 or 8 miles at a consistent pace without feeling like I am going to die. In fact, it can feel like a high. When I finish running I feel strong and powerful, grateful for the capacity of my body, and also humbled by its human limitations as I feel the need to rest and stretch and rejuvenate.

There was a season— however short it was— where I actually enjoyed running.

However, once I fell out of practice, I lost that enjoyment. When I think of running now, I don’t enjoy the thought of it. It stresses me out. Because I have been out of training, and I know I have lost capacity to do so, the thought of running discourages me.

I have a race I am called to run— spiritually.

I don’t always love the thought of this race but through my training, I have learned to enjoy it. God is increasing my capacity to endure. As I am persistent and obedient in my spiritual training, each day I get stronger.

When I look to the prophetic words spoken over me, or who I know God is calling me to be, or the assignments I know lie ahead in my future, it is easy to get discouraged. At times I compare the present version of me with the hypothetical future version of me that can “do” all these things, and I wrestle with inadequacy.

I compare myself to my calling and I feel like a failure, like I am not enough for the magnitude of who God is and what He requires.

Who am I that I should go to Pharoah?

This is idolatry: to say that I cannot be who God says I am. I idolize my own understanding over the mind and plans of God. God has desires, He has a heart, and when He reveals His heart that is a joy and a privilege for me to receive.

He is molding me, He is transforming me into the woman He has called me to be before the foundations of the world. I receive your peace even now Lord.

My Father in Heaven is my friend. He is my Lord. He is my Coach. He is my Counselor.

He will prepare me for the battles ahead.

I am grateful for a God that prepares His children for what is to come. Therefore I can confidently say,

7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Phillipians 3:7-14