training

Chocolate Is Salad

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

It sorta makes sense if you think about it.

In my own fantasy world, I’d be able to eat all the chocolate and not get fat or turn into a diabetic. But even in that fantasy world, I’d probably get as sick of chocolate as of anything else that I ate exclusively for days and days.

Chocolate is so good because it’s a treat. It’s rare. It’s not an every day thing. That’s what makes it good.

You could take that and apply it to anything spiritual.

It’s like sex within marriage versus all the time with just anybody.

It’s like being financially responsible while allowing yourself to splurge every now and then versus impulse buying all the time and disregarding your bank account.

Discipline is a dirty word in this culture, but it can be a beautiful thing if you can learn delayed joy instead of always caving in to instant gratification. Good things do come to those who wait indeed.

Now if I could only train myself to crave salads instead of chocolate all the time.

Running the Race

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

It’s hard to turn on the television and not hear something about the Olympics. Especially when somebody like Missy Franklin wins the gold medal for the US. You can’t help but want to root for somebody like her, the all-American girl who made us all proud.

I was watching some of the track and field events and watching in awe at the speed of some of these people. They truly are the best at what they do and they win because they’ve invested a lifetime worth of training into preparing for this moment.

Right now, I’m thinking of another race. The race Paul talks about. Only this race isn’t to the fastest or strongest. This race is all about finishing well.

The only way you don’t win this race is not to finish. Sounds easy, right? But there are so many distractions and temptations that try to divert our attention and get us off course and out of the race.

I can personally attest that there have been times when I’ve been paying too much attention to the crowd or who’s around me and comparing my pace to theirs. It’s easy to get too caught up in where you’ve been that you can very lose your way.

There’s only one place I should train my eyes on. One destination I should aim for. The finish line. Paul talks about keeping our eyes on the prize and fixing our eyes on Jesus, the true destination.

In the end, it won’t matter if I ran faster or slower than the person next to me. It won’t matter that I lost focus at times or found myself in the stands instead of in the race at times. It will only matter that I finished well.

It’s not about how you burst out of the gate at the starting gun. It’s not about how fast a pace you set in the beginning. All that matters is finishing well.

That’s good news for me. It means that it’s never too late for me to really start running the race with all that’s in me, arms outstretched toward the destination, eyes locked in on the prize of having Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

It also means that whether I ran great or poorly yesterday doesn’t matter. All that matters is how I run today.

So how will you run your race today?