Marathon Training Lesson #1

Throughout my training, some days of running were great and some were awful. Some days I felt I could keep going forever, other days I just willed myself through it, counting down the minutes until my run was over. Now, if I had began 'focusing' on those down days too much, I would have gotten in a discouraged state of mind and this would have began affecting all of my runs. then, I would have felt defeated before I ever began running, because discouragement breeds discouragement. Instead, when I had a bad run, I had to let it go and remember the next day was a new day full of new hope. Marathon training is up and down; it's a process, full of successes and full of failures. Every run is definitely not going to be perfect. In fact, often the hard runs are where I learned the most about 'coping', and those lessons will probably be what gets me through the real race.



All of this made me reflect on my own life. I have and will have many successes and failures along the road of life. I am a flawed, imperfect human being who is going to make many mistakes. Even as I try to live my life for the Lord, so often I am going to get it so wrong, even if my heart was to get it right. But God does not want me to stay focused on and 'sit in' those failures. He wants me to learn from mistakes but than move forward, focusing on what lies ahead and live life to the best of my ability--for Him. And if I let them, those failures are going to help shape me into a person with more character and wisdom for the next curve in the road of life. I also can't live in the successes, or I am going to become puffed up and full of myself and start relying on myself and not Him. The point? I've got to keep on, keeping on, not focusing on the circumstances of the moment, but choosing to keep my gaze on Jesus every step of the way.

Lamentations 3:22-23: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;great is your faithfulness.

Philippians 3:12-14: Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, 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, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

6 days to Go!

Six days to go until the Chicago Marathon! I cannot believe it! Each day this week I am going to try and post things I have learned throughout the past three months of marathon training. Lesson #1 I hope to post later today....Happy Monday! :)

The life of a Saint

Thinking upon this quote from Oswald Chambers today:

"Are you ready to be not so much as a drop in the bucket--to be so hopelessly insignificant that you are never thought of again in connection with the life you served? Some saints cannot do menial work and remain saints because it is beneath their dignity."

Am I okay with being insignificant? Am I okay with not being recognized? I have to admit that I have SUCH a long way to go in this regard!!!

Faith and Prayer

Taken from the works of E.M. Bounds:

• Faith is an operation of God, a divine illumination, a holy energy implanted by the Word of God and the Spirit in the human soul--a spiritual, divine principle which takes of the supernatural and makes it a thing apprehendable by the faculties of time and sense.
• Faith gives birth to prayer, and grows stronger, strikes deeper, rises higher, in the struggles and wrestlings of mighty petitioning.
• What an era of glorious achievements would dawn for the church and the world, if only there could be reproduced a race of saints of like mighty faith, of like wonderful praying! It is not the intellectually great that the church needs; nor is it men of wealth that the times demand. It is not people of great social influence that this day requires. Above everybody and everything else, it is men of faith, men of mighty prayer, men and women after the fashion of the saints and heroes enumerated in Hebrews, who "obtained a good report through faith," that the church and the whole wide world of humanity needs.
• Many men, of this day, obtain a good report because of their money-giving, their great mental gifts and talents, but few there be who obtain a "good report" because of their great faith in God, or because of the wonderful things which are being wrought through their great praying. Today, as much as at any time, we need men of great faith and men who are great in prayer. These are the two cardinal virtues which make men great in the eyes of God, the two things which create conditions of real spiritual success in the life and work of the church.
• We need, also, to guard against unbelief as we would against an enemy. Faith needs to be cultivated. We need to keep on praying, "Lord, increase our faith," for faith is susceptible of increase. Paul's tribute to the Thessalonians was, that their faith grew exceedingly. Faith is increased by exercise, by being put into use. It is nourished by sore trials.
• Faith grows by reading and meditating upon the Word of God. Most, and best of all, faith thrives in an atmosphere of prayer.
• The pastor who succeeds in changing his people from a prayerless to a prayerful people, has done a greater work than did Augustus in changing a city from wood to marble. And after all, this is the prime work of the preacher. Primarily, he is dealing with prayerless people--with people of whom is said, "God is not in all their thoughts." Such people he meets everywhere, and all the time. His main business is to turn them from being forgetful of God, from being devoid of faith, from being prayerless, so that they become people who habitually pray, who believe in God, remember him, and do his will. The preacher is not sent to merely induce men to join the church, nor merely to get them to do better. It is to get them to pray, to trust God, and to keep God ever before their eyes, that they may not sin against him.

I Care. And So I Run.

Up on Team World Vision!

Oh, this so resonates with me and gets me excited for October 12!!!! :) This gets at the very heart of why I am doing this marathon...well, it didn't start out that way, it started out as me just wanting to accomplish a goal, to be able to say, 'I ran a marathon.' But, it has turned into something so much more than this. Read this link below--she says it better than I could ever say it.
Oh, I am so very excited to be running on the same team as these people!!!!

http://schmunkthis.blogspot.com/2008/09/big-day.html

Thoughts on Prayer and Resting

I have been reading 'George Mueller, The Father to the Fatherless' to my children. This man was such a great man of God because of his prayer life. We have been learning so much by studying the life of this man. He took care of over two thousand orphans, all the while not asking for one penny from anyone. The Lord always provided in response to his prayers to God. That is amazing to me! He never let anyone know what was needed; he only let God know. And God came through every single time! I have not been able to get out of mind some of what we read last night: 'Mr. Mueller taught people how to pray. "Once I am sure that a thing is right and for the glory of God," he said, "I keep on praying for it until the answer comes. I don't give up! The great fault of the children of God is, they don't continue in prayer. If they would, they would see great things from God."

How often do I not tarry in prayer? How often do I give up? One of the many lessons I have learned through training for this marathon is perseverance. I hope to write more about this later, but the perseverance I have learned in the physical realm of running is something God wants to spill over into my spiritual life in the aspect of prayer. I so want to have the perseverance George Mueller had!

Secondly, I read a great article about 'resting in God'. It said this:

'Homeschooling, raising children, living a godly life--none of these are purely human jobs. In a nutshell, the task is bigger than you are. This is where sleep comes in. God wants us to remember that the task is ultimately His. We work for Him but we have the freedom to rest in that work. It takes a whole lot of pressure for a human being to forgo sleep--the kind of pressure that comes when we decide to shoulder a load God never meant us to carry. Our joy is to come alongside God and labor under His direction and power--not to take His work on ourselves'

"It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrow; for so he giveth his beloved sleep."