on training

My nephew recently went to Tampa and ran the Gasparilla 15K with his dad. “Nine miles,” I said, impressed. “Had you been training to run that distance?”

“No,” he said. “My dad called me the day before and said come run this with me. So I did.”

He’d never run nine miles in his life, and he hadn’t done any running recently.

All things considered, he’d done really well – ran 10 minute miles and beat his dad to the finish by 6 seconds. But think how he might have done if he’d trained (and how much better he’d have felt the next day).

My nephew showed, if you want to race at your best, you’ve got to train. Hebrews exorts us to run the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on the One who perfected it. To do that well, we need to train – to log the daily miles in which we push ourselves over and over so that on race day, we’re primed and ready to go.

How do we prime ourselves for race day in following Jeses? There are plenty of ways, but I’d guess few are better than daily time reading the bible and praying. They are a little like the training runs we make getting ready to race. In those training runs, we repeatedly discipline ourselves, exploring – and shoring up - our weaknesses. In the process we grow stronger.

A solid time of reading and prayer does something similar. It’s an act of discipline in which we learn what God says via the Bible. We consider our weaknesses and grow stronger in our knowledge of Him and ourselves.