Spiritual Lessons from Jogging

Spiritual Lessons I Learned From Attempts To Jog

Hebrews 12:2, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Pastor’s Blog: Kevin Jesmer 3-28-09

It has been my dream to be able to jog two miles with joy and relative ease. But I have not got there yet. I do a lot of power walking. But recently I tried to incorporate a short jog at the end of my power walk, about 1/3 of a mile. Through this experience I learned something spiritual about perseverance. At the beginning of my attempt to run I had a goal in my mind, my house. That was my long term goal. I found that I could only keep running if I kept my eyes focused 10 feet in front of me. As soon as I lifted my eyes to try to see my home I lost all power, thinking I will never make it. I had the goal in my mind, but when I stopped looking at the small tasks before me, I could not go on.

In some ways this helps me to understand spiritual life. Our spiritual life is likened to a race. Paul writes, in Hebrews 12”1-3, “ 1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” The ultimate goal of our Christian lives is to know Jesus, enjoy Jesus, become more like him, have a right relationship with Jesus and be with him forever in the Kingdom of Heaven. And so we fix or eyes on Jesus. This is like me having a goal to run to my house. But we have smaller goals in our day to day walk with Christ. These have to do with our daily mission. These tasks can be overwhelming. We can easily despair and give up when facing all we need to do. We need to take these one step at a time, knocking them out one at a time, through faith, hope, prayer and obedience. We need to tackle each of them with the larger goal in mind, Christ. That is like running with your eyes 10 feet in front of you, keeping in mind that the final destination is home. “Inch by inch anything is a cinch.” This makes me thankful for my Christian faith. Without Jesus I would not know the ultimate goal of all I do. My day to day life would be overcoming task after task without a ultimate destination in my mind. This would be maddening to me. It would make me despair of life. I could never persevere and keep running the race of life. It is truly a gift from God, and a source of strength, to have Jesus as our ultimate goal in our spiritual race. May you fix your eyes on Jesus and tackle each smaller task with faith, hope, prayer and obedience as you run you race of life with perseverance.