Running With Patience

I want to run the race with vigor...

The above line from Andrew Peterson's song Let Me Sing, has never meant more to me than it has the past few weeks. I recently took up running again. I say again, not b/c I was ever an avid runner, but I would have spirts or seasons that I would 'run' to get in shape, though most of attempts were short lived. Well, when I started back a few weeks ago, let's say that my endurance level was slim to none. I could hardly jog a tenth of a mile without getting out of breath. It was discouraging and embarassing to say the least, but for some odd reason, I have stuck with it. I have patiently waited for my endurance to build, and I am happy to announce that this morning I ran 2 miles without stopping (not trying to brag b/c I know to many of you, thats a meager distance!) Now was I hurting afterwards??? A little, but the pain doesn't compare with the sense of knowing that I ran with endurance, though, I have to attest that there are many hills that I prayed myself up. It was the Lord giving me the strength!
Isn't our spiritual life in Christ like that, though? The writer of Hebrews exhorts us to 'run with patience'. Many of lifes 'trials' (hills) seem so steep that we aren't going to get through (up) them faithfully (without stopping), but it is the Holy Spirit in us that helps us perservere through those times, to press on toward the mark, and even to grow in our endurance.
The Lord has been teaching me alot lately about pressing on. I don't think it is ever something that a person masters, but isn't that, sorta the point? In pressing on, what we are really called to is to press in... press into/rely on HIM.

Let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.
Hebrews 12:1b
NLT