Philippians 3:13-14
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…
One night as I was saying good-night to Parker and Will, I asked if they wanted to get up early the next morning and run with me (of course, I knew they wouldn’t, because I was getting up at 5 am and that’s just ungodly for 11 year-old boys on a Saturday). They asked how far I was running and after I said 11 miles, Parker asked me how I was able to run that far.
“Oh, I just pretend someone’s chasing me!” I replied. He thought about that for a minute and then said something to the effect that I should instead run like my favorite things were waiting for me at the finish line.
“You like Diet Mountain Dew, right, Dad? You should pretend that a bunch of that is at the finish line.”
“Yeah!” Will chimed in. “And lots of gummy stuff because you like everything gummy.”
Pretty brilliant stuff came out of my boys that night, and Paul would agree with them. It is always so much better when we’re running to something rather than from something. We live in a world of runners. Sure, maybe not physically, but spiritually and emotionally we’re all running.
Some of us are still running from failure, or from a bad relationship. How about people that run from church, or run from a bad job? The problem is that if we’re spending all of our energy trying to get away from something, then we’ll never have any energy to spend in the pursuit of the great things that God has waiting for us. What has He called you to? You can’t really run towards that until you’ve closed the chapter on what you ran from.
Perhaps you need forgiveness to really let go of what you ran from. Maybe you need to forgive. Whatever it takes, though, it is time to let the hope of a future prize be the motivation for your run, and not the regret and bitterness of what was at the starting line.
Diet Dew and everything gummy are waiting for me. What waits for you?
