Run your race — or, as it is stated in the book of Hebrews,
“Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” – Hebrews 12
There are three messages here.
RUN your race.
Don’t walk, sit, lie down, or avoid your race — run.
Run with endurance. Put your heart into it. Focus, persist, excel, and rise to the challenge. Whatever obstacles life throws your way — don’t retreat, engage and overcome.
It can seem like a lot to ask. Depending on your circumstances, your health, your education, your experience, and more — it can seem unreasonable to expect success, accomplishment, and victory. But that is exactly what God is offering you today.
When you choose to fully invest in success where you are today, you open the doorway for God to increase His impact on your tomorrow.
What you put into life has a lot of impact on what you get out of it. The old weightlifters mantra of “no pain, no gain” or the basic fact in business of “no risk, no reward” both drive at the same underlying fact that you are capable of pushing beyond your current comfort zone, accepting greater challenge, and receiving greater blessings when you can see potential and rise to the level that God sees in you.
Don’t go halfway hoping for someone else to finish your purpose, accomplish your mission, or fulfill your calling.
RUN your race.
And when you choose to run, run YOUR race.
Even when you have dedication, persistence, perseverance, and motivation you need clear vision and identity to give you direction. You need to understand who you are, what you are capable of, how much influence you have, where you can go, and when you are being gifted with the opportunity to overcome, if you want to receive everything that God has in store for you.
You need to run YOUR race. You have features, characteristics, limitations, and flaws. You have gifts, abilities, talents, and resources. You are a unique and individual creation that has a unique and individual offering to bring to the table. You weren’t created to be someone else. You weren’t designed to fill someone else’s role. YOU were called. YOU were chosen. YOU were selected and empowered to make a difference where you are because of who you are, where you’ve come from, where you are going, what you’ve experienced, and every other aspect of what it means to be you.
If you don’t run YOUR race, no one else is going to. So, embrace who you are, what you have to offer, and your unique calling and gifting from God is going to take you places you’ve never even dreamed of.
Run YOUR race.
And finally, run your RACE.
God never said life was easy. Life is a challenge filled with obstacles, set backs, failures, defeats, and mistakes. You may stumble. You may fall.
It’s like Rocky said, “You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
You may look at the lives of those around you and think they seem easier than yours. You may wish you had different challenges, obstacles, situations, or personal flaws to face. You may believe that you would succeed if only you were given different circumstances, different emotions, different capabilities, or different relationships. These are not productive ways of thinking about life.
If you are waiting to become someone else, stop waiting. If you don’t like your circumstances, your emotions, your capabilities, or your relationships — change how you approach them. Make a choice, take action, pursue education, develop a new skill set, alter your beliefs, get a counselor, a coach, or a mentor. Evaluate what is holding you back, or what you wish you could improve and then take a step to make a positive difference.
Life is a race — not because it is some sort of cosmic competition where only a few can win — life is a race because every human being has the opportunity to run their personal best, accomplish their full purpose, and overcome the obstacles that they discover along the way.
God is looking to empower you, provide for you, connect you, elevate you, and establish you.
So, don’t wait around for something to change — step out in faith knowing that God is working to make a change in you, for you, and through you the moment you join the race.
Consider this, you can’t hire someone to get in shape for you, but you can hire someone to get you in shape.
It’s time to realize that God is your divine nutritionist, trainer, coach, physical therapist, sports psychologist, and more. God is ready not only to give you the victory, but to cast the vision, do the work, and be there with you every step of the way.
So, get out there and run your race. RUN your race. Run YOUR race. And, run your RACE.
God is going to strengthen, encourage, inspire, support, heal, empower, elevate, and embrace you every step of the way. And God is going to give you the victory He has promised.
It’s not going to be easy, but I guarantee you it’s going to be worth it.
It’s like the prophet Isaiah said,
“Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of His understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” – Isaiah 40
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