Welcome to the Faith & Fitness Friday Link-Up, co-hosted by Raechel (@psyched2run) and Rachel (@mcmichaelrach). The goal of the Faith & Fitness link-up is to create a fitness-focused community which shares in the joy of learning about and spreading the Good News. The link-up will provide an opportunity for shared fellowship. We hope you will join us each week in finding new ways to make scripture relevant to our lives!
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S(cripture): See Image Above
O(bservation): Hebrews 12 is a chapter full of encouragement. When we find ourselves in dark times, we need only read this chapter to receive a reminder of all we can, and should, endure in order to follow and worship Jesus. Indeed, though the scripture we’ve chosen this week can be most easily applied to fitness, many other verses throughout the chapter speak to endurance: Hebrews 12:1, 3, 6, 7…the list goes on and on. But we should rest assured that we, in considering Jesus, “will not grow weary and lose heart”, because all we experience in comparison to his death on the cross is minor. I think verses like this in the Bible help to keep us humble – to remind us that things are going on outside of our own tiny, focused worlds, and that we should reconsider our perspective.
A(pplication): Consider how you felt at the end of your last race. Pictured above is me at the end of the 15K I ran in Paris, France. Let me tell you how terrible that run was (or, I’d better not. You can read my race recap here.) To both shorten it and to give you waaayyy too much information, I had to poop for roughly 99% of this run. Badly. And it was too warm. And there were hills.
But you would never know it from my picture at the end (above, with my friend Sarah). At the end, I looked (and felt) AMAZING! Accomplished. Proud. Exhausted mentally and physically, but in that good way we crave. In other words, after all was said and done, all the running produced “a harvest of…peace” for me.
Who finishes a race and thinks, man, I really regret doing that?
No one, that’s who.
So whenever you are having trouble getting up early when the alarm goes off. Or you feel like you just can’t possibly get your feet going for that run. Or the stress of work tells you to sit on the couch or take a nap instead of heading to the gym, remind yourself of this verse. Remind yourself that, though you may not feel like training or being disciplined in this moment – when you reach your goal, a whole host of good feelings await you. And at the end of it all, God’s grace awaits you.
P(rayer): I pray today that God strengthens me. That in my moments of weakness, he will gently lay this verse of scripture on my heart. That he will help me to shift my perspective from “oh, why God? Poor me, don’t make me, how come no one else struggles with this?” to “I’ve got this. It’s just one step at a time and I can take this step and then the next…and the next..and the next” so that I may finish strong.
What “race” are you training for? What seem to be your biggest struggles in training?
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