Day 6: Stay In Your Own Lane!

Hebrews 12:1 NLT “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.  And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

God wants us to run our unique race in life with endurance.  What He is saying is, He wants us to thrive.  He doesn’t want us stuck in the past or sitting and waiting for Him to mysteriously give us all the answers to our questions or lead us with a pillar of cloud or fire. He wants us to live in as a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT), redeemed and living because of His saving grace (unmerited favor).  He cautions us to stay in our lane and run the race set before us. Not to try and run someone else’s race.  We are to run our race, energized by stress and not consumed by life’s worries.  He wants us to thrive and someday arrive at the finish line of eternity with Him.

Think of it like this, you’re a prize pony, and you’re at the starting gate.  You have trained, you have been fed and you’re ready to go.  You are answering His call.  You are using God’s biological preparation of your body (Day 4), you’re just waiting for the gate to open to run free.  The start gate opens and off you go! Then, instead of running free, you look over into the lane next to you.  You see a tail, and on the other side nothing – no horse in sight. You begin to question your own race, am I behind? Am I ahead? Oh my!  Maybe I should speed up, but realize this isn’t my training pace and say, “I’m going to run out of energy if I keep moving this fast!”  Instead of staying in your own lane and running your race at your pace; you are now more concerned with the race of the pony on both sides. Immersed in beating one and catching up to the other.  You lose your footing and you fall, crash or run out of strength and energy.  Your comparison has killed your contentment.  You are no longer running your race; you are looking at others, comparing yourself to others and trying to run their races only to defeat yourself. Why? You envied their race or puffed yourself up because you were ahead. All along, forgetting about your own race, the one God created for you to run, the one that you started.  Instead you become weighed down by failure and injury.  You are stuck.  Unmotivated, unable to move forward, dwelling on the past, listening to lies that paralyze your movement forward.  

Being resilient means running that race, even if you stumble and aren’t always the winner.  You have tools and skills to bounce back.  With His grace, you can run your race again. He wants us to, “press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:14 NLT. He wants us to bounce back, rise again and thrive.  Your Vitality IN Christ is always there, you just lost site of it playing the game of comparison.

God wants us to remain faithful (2 Timothy 4:7 NLT) and keep our eyes on the prize of eternal life with Him.  When life is weighing us down and we feel we are ineffectively coping or stuck; He wants us to seek the connection with Him.  He is our endless resource.  He can fill us up when we feast on His Word.  He can heal our wounds when we forgive as resilient people do and as children of God are called to do. He can give us life giving water from a well that never runs dry.  He wants us to be faithful and run the race set before us.  So that on the day of judgement we can as Paul said in Philippians 2:13-16NLT, “be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.” 

Prayer: Lord God, help me to stay in my lane.  Help me to look to You first and not follow others blindly. Help me to remember that comparison kills contentment. Help me to see that I am not meant to run anyone else’s race. Help me to build the discipline of feasting on Your Word and drinking in Your Wisdom.  Help me live as a resilient, thriving person who exudes Your Joy, Your Light and remains faithful until the end.  Amen.