Category: discipline

Run In Such a Way

Posted on by Dorci

His name is Zach, and he loves to run. I mean he loves it. He ran cross country and track in high school. He studied runners like Usain Bolt and Zach Bitter, and started eyeing the pros. 

His philosophy wasn’t to look at the greats and think he could never do what they did.  Instead, he looked at them as human beings as he was, as having goals and simply training hard and going for it, and Zach saw no reason he couldn’t do that, too. 

So on his high school graduation day Zach announced to his mom he wanted to run a 100-miler before he turned 20. He had ten months to train.

Zach was laser-focused on his goals. He began training with a coach and ran his first 5K, then a 10K, then a 26-mile marathon, and then a 50-mile ultramarathon.

Throughout the process fellow runners embraced him, encouraged him, and supported him every step of the way. 

Finally, he was ready, heart, mind, and body. He signed up for the Coldwater Rumble ultramarathon. One hundred miles. 

The runners gathered at sunrise. At 19, Zach was the youngest. 

He ran throughout the day with only a few refueling pitstops along the way. He was tired, his body ached, and his feet were on fire, but he was determined to keep running. 

His coach ran alongside him, encouraging him, and whenever he circled back around after another 25-mile lap, his cheering section was there to help him keep going. He finished lap 3 – 75 miles. 

The trail was dark now. It was the middle of the night, but a secure headlamp lit his way. 

By sunrise, Zach was dealing with a hip flexor strain that caused him to slow to a walk for a bit, but he stayed in the race. He was determined, and soon he picked up his pace again. 

The sun was up, and while some runners had dropped out of the race, Zach neared the finish line with a smile on his face, his goal in sight, and his family and friends cheering him on. 

At 28 hours, 6 minutes, and 36 seconds, he crossed the 100-mile mark.  At 19, he was the youngest to ever finish the race.

Oh, did I mention Zach has autism?

Zach’s perceived weakness by some was in reality a strength. He’d always been very focused as a kid, and that focus helped him achieve a goal that, at his age, no one else had. 

Though I’ll never be this kind of runner, every aspect of Zach’s story inspires me to keep running in the race I’m called to in Christ. 

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
1 Corinthians 9:24

Run in such a way…  

We are to take our spiritual race seriously.

We may look at the so-called spiritual greats – Paul the apostle, who wrote much of the New Testament, John the apostle, who recorded words from the LORD Himself, George Müller, Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, Billy Graham, and countless others, and think we could never do what they did. But why not? They were human beings like we are, who simply had a strong faith in Jesus Christ that caused them to run their race in obedience.

Who knows what God may want to do through any of us? Any perceived or even actual weaknesses we have don’t need to limit us. If we let Him, God can use those weaknesses to be the very things that propel us forward because when we are weak, He is strong on our behalf. 

Suffering may seem to be a weakness, but it is our training ground. As we look to Christ in and through it, He’ll teach us to persevere, to trust Him, to grow stronger in ways we never would have otherwise.

At times in our race, we’ll need to sit down and rest, or we may even fall. It’s okay. We all do at one time or another. Get back up and keep walking, keep running. 

And we need to cheer one another on to victory. There are times the most discouraging thing is not the world, it’s not the fall, it’s not the suffering. Sometimes the most discouraging thing is not being supported and encouraged (or even actively discouraged) by those who should be cheering the loudest. 

In the spiritual race, we’re not running against each other. We are each running a unique race purposed just for us, but we are running together. Let’s be brothers and sisters who pick one another up, who take a hand, who pray and encourage and love as we watch one another run our races. 

And no matter what, our Coach will always be by our side. He’ll run the race with us, giving us everything we need, and we can trust Him to never leave our side.

“Therefore…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, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
Hebrews 12:1a-2

So, let’s put on and keep on the proper attire for our race – our spiritual armor, and our light – God’s Word, and keep running with our eyes on the prize of eternal life with Jesus Christ.

When he’d crossed the finish line, Zach said, with a smile, “I’m tired, but I’m happy. I finished the race.” 

May we, too, say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  2 Timothy 4:7

And if you’ve never signed up for this race, you’ve never known Jesus Christ personally, the Bible says this: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

If you believe that Jesus is who He said He is, that He is the Messiah, the Savior who came to die on the cross as payment for our sins, and you desire to put your faith in Him, to give your life to Him and begin following Him, just talk to God and let Him know. You can pray a prayer that goes something like this: 

Dear God, please forgive me for my sins. I believe your Son Jesus died on the cross to pay for my sins and I accept His payment. Please come live in my heart and lead me in this race called life. I pray in Jesus’s name, amen.

If you have any questions please let me know. God bless you!

For Him, 
Dorci

 

 

 

 

 

The Full Armor of God

Posted on by Dorci

After the LORD reminded me, I wanted to remind you to put on and keep on the full armor of God. Not one or two pieces. All of it. We never know when the enemy will come, and we can’t afford to get lazy or be found unprepared, caught up in the world. 

And once we’re outfitted and ready for battle, we must pray in the Spirit.

Just as we’re called to now walk in the Spirit, by the renewed hearts and minds given to us by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we might obey Him and do all things in His power, so we are called to pray in the Spirit, asking Him to reveal to us the will of the Father, and then pray. Because without Him we can do nothing, but in Him we can do all things.

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him.” 1 John 5:14-15


“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 

Stand firm then, with the

belt of truth buckled around your waist, 

with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 

and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 

In addition to all this,

take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 

Take the helmet of salvation 

and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Ephesians 6:10-18 

 

 

Behind Enemy Lines

Posted on by Dorci

I recently watched Behind Enemy Lines again, and there were so many spiritual parallels I had to share what God showed me. 

Even though it’s a 20-year-old movie and surely the statute of limitations for spoilers must have run out by now, I’ll try not to give away anything too important in case you haven’t seen it. 

Owen Wilson plays Lt. Chris Burnett, an American naval flight officer stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic sea during the Bosnian War. 

For Lt. Burnett, being a soldier, so far, has been a lot of drills, training, exercises, and routine assignments and he resents it. It hasn’t been the thrill ride he thought it would be, so he’s handed in a letter of intent to leave the Navy to his commanding officer, Admiral Reigart, played by Gene Hackman. 

The admiral tries to make him understand the importance of his training, but Burnett’s not impressed. He’s done.

Admiral Reigart decides the lieutenant needs a little discipline, so he assigns him, along with another pilot, to a routine mission on Christmas day, but the situation soon turns into far more than anyone expected. 

The title says it all: behind enemy lines. 

When we look out at our world today we may feel like we’re behind enemy lines. There is warring all around us, fighting, hatred, violence, attacks on the Christian faith. The whole world seems out of control and we feel like we’re in a place we don’t understand and don’t belong.  

And the truth is we are behind enemy lines and we always have been. Much of the world has been experiencing it, and lately it’s become far more apparent to us than it was before. The curtain’s been drawn back a bit and we’re seeing the havoc wreaked by the enemy in the ugliness of the sin in the world on display in our own backyard. 

We’re seeing the spiritual warfare Paul talked about in his second letter to the church in Corinth.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds…” (2 Cor. 10:3-4) 

And because we’re in the midst of spiritual warfare, an object of the enemy of God, we are soldiers in that war. Paul reiterated that in 2 Timothy and in Philemon:

“You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who enlisted him as a soldier.” (2 Tim 2:3-4)

“…to the beloved Apphia, Archippus our fellow soldier…” (Philemon 1-2a)

If God has called us into faith through Christ, we are soldiers in a spiritual war that’s been going on since the Garden of Eden. 

As soldiers, God’s been training us, preparing us to be strong in the faith, to have courage to weather the battles. We grow from discipline to discipline until we are changed into the likeness of His Son, the perfect soldier, who was our example of enduring warfare.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

We’ve all read that and maybe, like Lt. Burnett, we haven’t seen how we can have joy in our training, how there could possibly be any purpose in our suffering. We haven’t fully understood that our trials are our testing, our discipline, teaching and training us to be mature in the faith, to persevere in trials, to trust God more and more to give us wisdom and understanding as we face the next hardship, and the next one, and the next… We don’t know what we’ll face, but God does, and He knows what He’s training us for. 

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.” (Hebrews 12:11-12)

Whatever trials we’ve gone through or are going through right now or will go through tomorrow, don’t let them be for nothing. Let them train us. Let us humble ourselves under our Father’s mighty and wise hand to make us disciplined soldiers in His army, fighting His way with the spiritual armor God’s equipped us with. 

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Ephesians 6:12-13

Let us then, in Christ, strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees. In other words, let us put aside our complacency, any weakness of faith, any unbelief or fear, put on our armor and be strong and courageous as we stand to face our spiritual enemy, knowing we’ve been trained and we are equipped, and in Christ we have the victory. 

Faith, Not Feelings

Posted on by Dorci

I really hate those times when God feels so far away. 

I don’t always understand why it’s that way. Sometimes it might be a sin I need to confess. Sometimes I’m the one who’s been far away, too preoccupied with other things. Sometimes it might be that I just haven’t get enough sleep and I’m feeling grouchy.

And sometimes I think He just wants me to learn to trust Him even when the feelings aren’t there. 

I remember the day my dad taught me how to ride a bike down the very sidewalk in the picture. I was about six. My hands gripped the handlebars and I looked back and forth between the concrete sidewalk beneath me and the scenery in front of me while my dad held onto the back of the seat pushing me along. We did that a few times, and the next time I looked back and he was four feet behind me. 

I remember the days, too, when salvation was new, and the feelings of God’s closeness filled my heart and soul. When He was teaching me to know He’s always right there with me.

And then He began to wean me from my feelings, teaching me to trust Him even when I didn’t feel Him. 

That lesson’s taken longer than an afternoon. Seems I’m still learning it, but I am learning.

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” 
2 Corinthians 5:7 

I’m learning He’s always right there whether I feel Him or not. Whether I see Him working in my impossible situation or not. I’m learning He loves me even when I sin, even when I’ve stepped away, even when life gets overwhelming, and yes, even when I’m grouchy, or not feeling well, or sad, or a hundred million other possible reasons.

Not only is our Heavenly Father with us, He loves us so much He’s given His Holy Spirit to live in us. 

No matter what we’re going through, or ever will go through, if we’ve believed in Christ as our Savior, His Holy Spirit is a permanent resident inside our hearts to give us comfort, peace, wisdom, and direction, and He’ll never, ever leave us. 

So we can walk and live and follow and work and yes, ride, not by what we see or feel, but by faith, by our belief that God is who He says He is, being confident in His faithfulness and goodness, His constant presence, and His everlasting love. 

In Christ, 

 

Your Story, My Story, His Story

Posted on by Dorci

“Therefore we also,
since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight,
and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him
endured the cross,
despising the shame,
and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2

I love books. While I haven’t taken nearly as much time lately to read as I’d like, I have been living out the chapters of my own book. 

We all are. 

Just like the countless stories we read in the Bible, we each have our own story. Some are more dramatic, some tragic, some adventurous, some joyful, and thankfully, all with a little comedic relief. 

All our stories look different, but all have one Author and one Finisher: Jesus. 

Long before we were born He knew the story that would be written with our lives. He knew how each chapter would unfold and what would need to take place to propel the story forward, to complete our faith, until our story was finished, our faith perfected. 

Sometimes we don’t understand what’s going on.

Why is this happening in my life, and why is it happening now? 

And sometimes we can start looking at other people’s stories, comparing ours with theirs, wishing our story had a chapter or two out of their book. 

But our God is a personal God, and our story is unique. Our Author takes into account its characters and how and what they need in order to develop, bit by bit, until fully grown. 

So while our story may be at times full of pain and questions, we never walk through it alone. Our Author walks with us. 

The choice we have is whether or not to walk with Him. To accept the story He’s given us, and even receive it with thanksgiving, knowing that He’s using it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly, to change us, grow us, and mature us until our faith is complete. 

And somehow, someway, He is making all our stories work together into one grand narrative that ultimately tell one story, His story. A story of grace and mercy, love and beauty. A story of redemption, faith, forgiveness, strength, and hope. 

A story of the gospel, lived out in our very own lives.

One day we’ll see that more fully than we ever can now. Because when the book closes on the story of our lives here, the exciting sequel begins, the likes of which the world has never seen. 

So let’s rejoice that we play a part in the grandest of stories, and that our Author and Finisher is with us and loves us to the end.

In Him,