I have never liked to run. Actually I have always really HATED to run. I have been a personal trainer, an aerobic instructor and have loved fitness for many years, but NOT running. Recently, I decided that I wanted a challenge and that I would make myself run for 6 weeks. If, after that 6 week time period I still hated to run, I would go back to my other forms of exercise, but I would commit to the 6 weeks. It was rough the first couple of weeks and I wondered if this challenge was a good idea, but I kept going, I was not going to let running kick my butt. I am almost done with the challenge and although I can't say that I love to run, God has used this time in some pretty amazing ways to teach me about myself and pushing past the pain in life for the goal ahead. To be able to hear His voice through the pain when all I wanted to do was give in to it. So many times when I felt like I HAD to stop, I could feel His Presence, hear His voice telling me that I could do it, that I was well able. I started with alternating walking and running, from one mailbox to the next in my neighborhood... small goals and then would ask God what was next, how should I expand those goals and I would hear Him speak on what was next, it has been a beautiful time.
This morning I really was not at all wanting to run but I did. I didn't push myself very hard, but I had a great time of prayer - ("prayer" meaning, no fancy talk, just time out running with my Best friend talking). I was close to the end of my run when I normally walk a little then run up the slight hill and down to my house, but instead of stopping I felt compelled to just continue all the way home - further than I usually run, on a day I wasn't feeling it. But I felt as if He were cheering me on to do it.
As I had been running I had been thinking about something that a woman I had just met prayed over me about a year ago. As she prayed she said, "WOW, you are a world changer!" She knew very little about me and her prayer caught me by surprise because I don't think of myself in that way at all, I am just me. But since that prayer, I have thought about it a lot, and this morning as I thought about it, it rose up in my spirit that I really AM a world changer, it doesn't matter if I FEEL like one, I am, and I started to ask the Lord what a world changer really is.
When I would think of World Changers, I would think of people like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. but is that what a world changer always is? Is it always someone who will make the history books? What about those that quietly make a difference that no one ever knows about? What about the man who works as a security guard and brings PB&J's to a couple of friends of mine that live under a bridge? I don't even know his name, but he is a hero, he is a world changer in my eyes because he changes the world for the people he touches with his love and care for them. What if being a world changer is just stepping out and changing someone's day for the better? Giving of ourselves even in small ways, a kind word, an encouragement, etc. I have never known anything as powerful nor as addictive as the feeling of being in the center of God's heart to love people - there is nothing that compares to feeling His Presence, hearing His voice, experiencing His love and pouring that love on others, nothing...people spend their entire lives bound to drugs that suck the life OUT of them, lifestyles of striving for more - more money, more stuff, more fame, more whatever and there is no substance to it, just an empty pursuit... but the more of Him I give of myself, the more FULL I feel. There is nothing in the natural that follows His supernatural ways... the more we give to Him our hearts, the more He fills them with Himself, puts life in us, pours life through us... makes us world changers, not because we set out to change the world, but because we are so full of His love we can' help it, we are compelled to...
So as I was running further than I wanted to go this morning, I felt the Lord show me that I have a race to run, my entire life has been "training" for this time RIGHT NOW, my race is uniquely my own, I am not being timed, nor am I competing against another, I am just running MY race... It IS one of a world changer and as I began to crest the hill it was as if I could see many friends gathered on both sides of the road cheering me on. I was thinking that it was like God was cheering me on from the side lines as well, but then I felt Him say, " no, I am running WITH you."
You were made to be a world changer - you have YOUR race to run, come on, let's go!
Hebrews 12:12 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, 2 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.
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