You Might Be a Christian If...

Hopefully, you all had a little fun with the last post. You probably got to make fun of yourself a few times with comments like, "I SO do that!" Maybe you even added a few of your own. (If you did, be sure and comment so we can all enjoy!)

It never ceases to amaze me how different...but how alike runners are. If you need me to prove it to you, just stand at the finish line of a local race. The diversity of runners is amazing. We come in all different shapes and sizes, prefer specific paces and distances, insist on one brand of shoe over all others, hate running indoors or embrace gym memberships for your favorite treadmill...

No matter how different we are, we still have that one common bond as runners. You know that each person you're running with in a race finds time in their crazy schedule to train, whether early in the morning before class, or at night after the kids are in bed. They understand the amazing feeling of accomplishment in crossing a marathon finish line. They can empathize with an injury that forces you to resort to pool running for a month. They don't even expect you to have all of your toenails. Regardless of our personal preferences, we're all runners.

Being a Christian is the same way. We are so different - with differing backgrounds, from numerous countries, converted at different ages, each with unique spiritual gifts and callings on our lives. Just like runners though, we have that eternal bond as brothers and sisters in Christ.

In his first letter to Corinth, Paul points out this very point.

"For as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. So the body is not one part but many. If the foot should say, "Because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body," in spite of this it still belongs to the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body," in spite of this it still belongs to the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But now God has placed the parts, each one of them, in the body just as He wanted. And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? 20 Now there are many parts, yet one body.
So the eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" nor again the head to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, all the more, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary. And those parts of the body that we think to be less honorable, we clothe these with greater honor, and our unpresentable parts have a better presentation. But our presentable parts have no need [of clothing]. Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it." (I Corinthians 12:12-27)

There is not a spiritual gift, race, or worship style prefered by God. He views them all as equally important, and they are all needed for a spiritually alive and growing New Testament church.

So don't think that because you don't have a full-time job at a church that God hasn't called you to do His work. Just as running a 5K makes you just as much of a runner as an ultra-marathoner, stacking chairs after the worship service makes you just as much of a servant of Christ as the preacher. In the same way, if you are the one teaching the Bible study, don't think you are more important than the one who greeted participants at the door. (That's just as fake as sneering at someone with a Half Marathon Race Bib in the bathroom before the race's start. You know by mile 18, you're wishing you could switch with them!)

So embrace your spiritual gifts. Ask God to reveal to You how He wants to use you to do His work. Ask for forgiveness if you haven't been using the gifts He has given you, or if you have regarded yourself as more important than others in the church. Then, pray for opportunities to glorify God with the talents and abilities He has given you.

An additional challenge: Ask yourself if you are as easily identified as one of Gof's children as you are as a runner. If you made a list of "You Might Be a Christian If..." including things like love your enemies, turnd the other cheek when wronged, gives cheerfully, loves your neighbor as yourself...how would you measure up? Seek to be more blatant with your Christianity as you are in your love for running.

RUN UGLY

My running coach closed his weekly encouraging email with a challenge to “Run Ugly.” And being the girly girl that I am, I immediately took offense to that statement. I don’t want to run ugly! I don’t want to do anything ugly, if I can help it. I want to run pretty. I like pretty food, pretty shoes, pretty coffee (which is why I pay $6 a drink for it), pretty music, and things that smell pretty. I am a pretty kind of girl. So I must be honest, when I started running two months ago, I wanted that to be pretty too. I bought the adorably coordinating running outfit and was the cutest thing at the trails. But as soon as I actually began to run, I learned that running pretty isn’t really running. There is nothing pretty about a runner who has just finished a ten mile run. They are soaked in sweat, red-faced from exertion, with salt deposits on their face and arms, and they smell like BodyGlide. Running just isn’t pretty. It’s inspiring, challenging, and exhausting, but not pretty.

Neither is following Christ. Oh, some churches are trying to market Christianity as this warm and fuzzy, make you feel good all over, happily ever after transformation. But that is pure baloney. Following Christ is hard. It means saying no to old habits and resisting the temptation to sin. It means clinging on to Christ just to make it through the day. It means spending time on your knees getting to know your Savior. It means doing His will for your life, not your own. It means living to glorify Jesus Christ and not yourself. It means spiritual warfare and being misunderstood by anyone who doesn’t love Jesus just as much as you do. There is nothing pretty about following Jesus Christ. It is amazing, it has eternal rewards, it means never having to be alone ever again, it means your life has a great purpose, but it is not pretty.

Each one of us has a choice: pretty or ugly?
To be a runner, I have to leave pretty at the house before hitting the trails. But the flip side is that ugly or not, I get to run! I get to feel the wind in my hair, the sunshine on my face, feel my body rise to the challenge of the race. It’s glorious.

To be a follower of Christ, I have to give up warm fuzzies and die to myself. But the flip side is that as difficult as it is to follow Christ – I get to be a part of a purpose far greater than myself. I get to be forgiven. I get to share that amazing forgiveness with others. I get to spend eternity in a perfect heaven with my God. I get to walk with Jesus every day, following in his footsteps. I get to be a reflection of Jesus to the world, and that is way better than simply being pretty.

The Effects of Running Ugly:
(Pretty gets you compliments, so what does ugly get you?)

1. Icky-Sweat-Haters. People who don’t run just don’t get the sweat thing. They think it is icky and smelly and gross. As runners, we get past the sweat factor real quick, it is just evidence of our hard work. Non-runners don’t want to hang around someone who just finished a half-marathon because they don’t want the sweat to rub off. This happens all the time in the Christian life. Your continual push toward godliness makes them run away so you won’t get God all over them. “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:19

2. The You-Crazy-Runner Crowd. The people who stand on the sidelines and shake their heads as you run by. They don’t understand how you can enjoy such intense exercise. They think you are crazy for you love of running. They just don’t get it. Neither do non-believers. They won’t get why you give up sleep to read your Bible before work, or why you are kind to people who gossip about you, or why you put others first. They just won’t get it, and they never will unless they too start racing after Jesus Christ. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God”.1 Corinthians 2:12

3. The You-Make-Me-Feel-Fat-ers. People who don’t run, but wish they did. They know they need to get off the couch and hit the track to burn off last night’s Chinese take-out, but they just don’t want to. It’s too much work, it has been too long since they last exercised, they are too old and fat to change. We’ve all heard the excuses. Funny thing is, those are the same kind of excuses that I hear from people who don’t want to go to church. The discipline and athleticism of a runner makes couch-potatoes feel guilty. “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” John 3:19-21

4. Those who are inspired to run. Some people will see you running, see the joy it brings you, the benefit to your health and they will join you in the race. Most people will think you are insane, but a few will get it. And those are the ones that will run beside you as you race pass all the people who think you are crazy. Run to inspire. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:16-17

As modern girls, it is easy to get completely preoccupied with all things pretty.

Don’t. Don’t worry about pretty, just run.

Run!

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.” 1 Corinthians 9:24-26

“Holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.” Philippians 2:16

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2