Dear brothers,
One of the traps to avoid on your journey towards the promised land of freedom, is the “are-we-there-yet?” trap.
My love for running has been growing over the last few years. If you’ve read my other articles, or heard me speak, you’d know that the art of “fleeing” is essential for every believer. As in – literally running away from sexual immorality as the Bible commands us.
Learning how to run well is a good thing.
But why you should flee and not stay and fight is another topic 🙂
A few weeks ago my runners watch broke. It stopped charging and therefore died completely due to a lack of power. So, I was left without a tool to track my pace times and running distance.
I was used to checking my watch now and then to see how fast I was running and to check how far it was “to run back”… but now I had no way of tracking my time or distance during my run.
An older and wiser running-friend and Christian brother of mine had recently told me to learn to ‘take the watch off now and then, just to enjoy the run itself without the pressure of time.’ Well, here I was forced into that situation.
Soon everything changed.
With my watch still out of commission, I learned to run just for the joy of reaching the destination – however long it took.
Rather than comparing times to others who had run the same trails based on my super-smart watch tracking GPS abilities, it was just me and the road. Just a traveler on a journey to a destination. Time wasn’t a factor. In fact, it was impossible to measure until I had arrived back home and could stop and look back on what had been accomplished.
Brother, I believe that too often you are looking to the left and the right, comparing your pace, time-on-the-journey, and distance from where you started to the person next to you.
Or maybe even to my journey.
But you need to learn to run without a watch.
…I learned to run just for the joy of reaching the destination – however long it took.
I learned to run and not stop until I had reached my destination. Don’t settle in the wilderness when you were set free for the Promised Land!
I learned to lose sight of how long I had been running and embrace the journey for what it was: my journey.
I learned that it was only once I had arrived back at home that I could actually appreciate the process.
And I learned to press on until I had accomplished what I set out to do.
Brothers – learn to run the race without a watch. God is faithful… He who began a good work in you will be faithful to carry it through to the day of completion.
