Once upon a time, in a middle school far far away....
there was a tinier version of this sarcastic adult you all know and love who was regrettably being roped into running a relay race by her P.E. Teacher. This, however, was not just any old relay race, no, this was the relay race to end all relay races, the presedential fitness test.
If you don't already know this, the presedential fitness test is a series of fitness activities, those of us who live in the US are required to participate in when we attend public school. It's a way in which our government evaluates and "encourages" the fitness and health of its young students. As many of my classmates would probably attest, its a torturous affair and is, more than likely, responsible for the decided lack of voting in government elections that we see from my peers today. "You force us to exercise, we force you out of office!" I can just see the middle-school versions of us protesting and chanting now.
I remember huffing through my required amount of sit ups and thinking to myself "why in the world is the president worried about a bunch of 11 year old’s fitness?! Doesn’t he have more important things to do like bring peace to the Middle East or like maybe he could take care of mystery meat Thursday in the cafeteria instead of worrying about how many sit ups I can do in 60 seconds!" Needless to say, I was not impressed with my P.E. Teacher nor was I impressed with the president sticking his nose in my business. Now, I'm not going to bore you with all of the details of this aptitude test but one of the most important parts about it was that you could win prizes depending on how well you did in each of the challenges. Before we even attempted anything, our teachers handed us a long list of things we could win for being “extra fit” and beating out the rest of our classmates at certain activities. Personally, I couldn’t have cared less about the prizes but you know, there are always those overachieving kids that want to race you and do 2 more extra push-ups than you. I was not one of those satanic children because there was no convincing me that 50 pushups was worth a flimsy plastic frisbee but I digress.
During the relay race portion of the fitness test, we got split into teams and each team was handed this flimsy plastic baton. We were instructed to take turns running a mile around the school track as fast as we possibly could and then hand the baton to the next person on our team, and so on and so forth. Whoever finished first, won a prize for their whole team which if I remember correctly, was a pizza party? Which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. What was the logic behind that? Let's force the kids to exercise so they can earn junk food?
Regardless, it really didn't matter because my team lost, so our prize was that we got to watch the other team have a pizza party. (I'm just kidding, I honestly don't remember who won or lost, that was a long long time ago)
Now, while I don't remember much from back then, i do remember the ridiculous amount of times that baton hit the ground during our little relay race. I don't know if my teammates had really bad hand-eye coordination or sweaty palms or something but by the time the baton reached my hands, it was caked up with dirt and clay and grass. But I didn't care cause it was my turn to run the race so, I shot off down the track with my little hand cramped around plastic and dirt, while I ran for my life. I could hear my teammates yelling for me, half of them cheering me on, the other half yelling at me to go faster than my short little legs could carry me.
And THAT is the picture I have in my mind today while I’m reading Hebrews 12: 1-3 where it talks about “running your race”.
Plastic batons and worthless prizes and a bunch of middle schoolers yelling at me “RUN FASTER! RUN FOR IT!” while I’m coughing up a lung, trying desperately to keep my legs moving underneath me.
It’s not the prettiest picture is it? But let’s be honest, running your race isn’t pretty. It can often feel pointless and exhausting and at times, frustrating when you feel like you’re trying so hard but not really getting anywhere.
I can’t even tell you how many times I have felt like that little middle school version of me over the past couple of years, trying to run this race called life. Feeling so small, so inadequate, so ill-equipped and in some moments, resenting the baton in my hand. Yet still, just like that huffing and puffing ill-prepared child I used to be, giving it everything I've got in me.
This passage in Hebrews that we're going to walk through today is something God has been bringing to my attention constantly throughout the past year. He has been showing me so much of myself in every line and in every word. So, as you can imagine, I have A LOT to say about it.
However, for times-sake, I want to stick to these three main points so we’re not here forever. You're welcome.
These three key points have taught me so much about grace and God's love for me and what it means to carry on and run my race and I hope they can do a little bit of the same for you.
Let’s start off with the weights…
1. THE WEIGHTS
In Hebrews 12:1 it says “Let us throw off everything that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles us”. Other versions of the Bible use the word “weights” to describe the things that hinder us which I think is a lot more vivid of a picture when it comes to our daily lives, don’t you?
Weight is something we can all understand. The weight of grief, the weight of insecurity, the weight of trauma, the weight of shame. We know how serious some weights can feel, we know how bogged down we can get, and how heavy life can be at times.
A year or so ago, I was having panic attacks on a weekly basis and they weren’t panic attacks in the traditional sense. As someone who suffers from chronic illness that affects my heart and blood pressure and breathing, a panic attack for me can become a trip to the E.R. real fast. Especially if all that stress puts enough strain on my body enough for me to pass out.
Needless to say, I was not okay and there was one particular day where I was really not okay and I needed help so, I went to my dad. He was laying down in his room watching tv and I stumbled in not being able to breathe or talk or explain anything and he just told me to lay down and breathe. So, I did and after about 15 minutes or so, when I could talk again, I tried to explain how overwhelmed I felt and before I could start, my dad turned to me and said,
“When you walked in here I saw an image of you in my head. You had these big potato sacks on your back weighing you down and you couldn’t walk or breathe. God showed me that you are carrying all these burdens; all this weight and you're struggling because of it. But you have to put the sacks down, you have to let it go”.
Easier said than done right? But isn’t that what we all look like at some point, like pack mules carrying all this baggage around, crushed under the weight of our past, our pains, our troubles. Hebrews tells us to throw off every weight, everything that hinders us from running our race which makes complete sense if you think about it. I mean, who could possibly run like that?! When I was running that relay in middle school I was STRUGGLING and the only thing I was carrying was that plastic baton but can you imagine trying to run a relay carrying massive potato sacks full of stuff on your back? How unnecessarily exhausting! I would not do that! I don’t care what president was in office or what he had to say about my fitness. I am not a camel, I am not a mule and I am not carrying luggage or sacks or anything across that finish line but myself!
So why do we acquiesce to running our race carrying the weight of life on our shoulders? Why do we do that to ourselves? I think, most of us don’t even realize how much we’re carrying until the weight really starts pushing us down. Some of us don’t even think about it when we pick up the potato sacks life throws our way and chuck em on our back. We just see it in front of us, grab it, carry it and try to keep going. But we weren’t created to carry burdens, we are not creatures of burden, we are creatures of light. Jesus didn’t hang on that cross so you could carry it for the rest of your life, and don’t come at me with the whole “take up your cross daily” spiel because if you think that the cross represents burden, you need to crack open your Bible my friend cause the cross represents sacrifice, not burden. That verse in Luke says to “deny yourselves, take up your cross daily and follow Christ” meaning you have to give up your own way of doing things and die to yourself, the same way Christ died to His flesh. Not pin your brokenness to the cross and carry it around like a memorial to your suffering. That cross is a symbol of how God carried our burdens and our weight and got rid of them for us. So, what a pointless demonstration that would’ve been if God intended for you to then carry your sin and your burdens daily, am I right? In fact, Hebrews tell us the exact opposite, to throw it off, to chuck it, and I feel the emphasis of prejudice in that statement as if God is saying, “take the trash out where it belongs, get it off! Don’t get mad, get gladd and throw it away”. Throw off the weight and the sin. That means the mistakes you make and the shame that follows, throw it off! It’s all a weight that you cannot afford to carry while you are running your race.
2. THE BATON
This part really got me, I mean God really slapped me in the face with this. The other day, I was having a conversation with my cousin and sharing about how I had fallen short once again. I had sinned, I was feeling worthless and like I didn’t want to do anything or go anywhere, blah blah blah. In the middle of our conversation, God just started speaking through me about myself. I mean the audacity, has that ever happened to you? You start talking to someone about something, minding your own business and all of a sudden God starts calling you out with your own words, like excuse me sir? I didn’t order this correction with a side of sass, I came here for the hand-cut fries, not to be told on. But He just started preaching to me with so much love, compassion and encouragement; I was completely enthralled. He reminded me that sometimes progress doesn’t feel like progress and sometimes you feel like you’re going backwards when you fall short but that's simply not the truth. He shared with me that forward movement is better than stagnancy, even when your forward movement is imperfect. Even if you fall after the first step, you’re still a step further forward than where you were yesterday and God actually celebrates that! Like a parent celebrates their child taking their first steps after crawling for so long, God celebrates our first steps out of every form of bondage, every trauma and every struggle we deal with. Isn’t that amazing that we serve a God who celebrates our baby steps even in our brokenness? He's the kind of God who celebrates our journey, not just us reaching our destination.
Throughout the rest of the day, after I got off the phone with my cousin, God just kept speaking to my heart saying, “Daughter, even if you fail or fall, it doesn’t mean all your progress up to this point is lost. You don’t have to start all over with grace!" And then He said something so profound I stopped short. This is the word that slapped me in the face, you ready? God said, "You dropped the baton, just pick it up and keep going! Finish the race!”
I know that sounds so simple but it instantaneously made grace so clear to me.
I finally got it, I understood what God expected of me in my weakness.
I dropped the baton. I didn't lose the race, I don't have to go back and start over, I didn't fail, I just dropped something.
That’s the grace of God at work in your race. Pick up your baton. Don’t cry over it, don’t sit on the floor in shame and throw a pity party, you’ve got things to do for the kingdom of God, you’re in the middle of a race! God doesn’t need your pity party, He doesn’t need your shame-faced apologies.
He needs you to pick up the baton from where you dropped it and keep running. He said “Come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in a time of need” (Hebrews 4:16) Why? Because grace is a completed work and it's sufficient for every time you drop that baton, past, present and future. It's there for you, you don’t have to beg for it, you don’t have to appeal to God to cover you in His grace, you’re already covered. Grace is a resource for the believer not a VIP experience that requires funeral attire and a holy reservation. And no, this is not permission to sin and live unrepentantly, it’s simply the bold expectation of God's faithfulness and grace: that because of Him you can mess up and still get up!
“So you fell? You've still got a race to run, pick up your baton, dust off your purpose and go! So what, your anxious and uncomfortable? Keep it pushing, your growth is outside of your comfort zone and you’re not alone! You’re afraid? I didn’t say you wouldn’t be afraid but I did say I would be with you, that I would strengthen you and help you and uphold you with my righteous right hand. Not because of who you are or what you do but because I AM!”.
That baton you’re carrying with you is your mantle, your calling and it’s the only thing you should be carrying. It was handed to you by God and delivered to you by the ones who came before you. Their faith and the truth of the gospel displayed in their life, is how that baton came to be in your hand. Now, it’s your turn to carry the mantle of the gospel and to run YOUR race, keeping your eyes on your prize up ahead.
Although God tells us to lay aside every weight, I'm just going to be honest, sometimes we don't realize how heavy that baton can feel in our grasp. Even the plastic baton I held in my hand in middle school felt heavy after lap number three but the thing is, whether your baton is made of plastic or solid gold, you don't have to hold up the mantle of your calling on your own.
Yes, you've been handed something important but God didn't bless you and call you so you could do everything alone. You are just a vessel, a messenger, and there are so many other people He's placed in your life, on your team and on that track, to help you carry that baton to the finish line. The race we're running isn't meant to be run alone! The baton you're carrying isn't meant for just your hands! It's a relay and just like this mantle was handed to you when someone else finished their laps, when your time is up, God will hand what He's had you build to someone else so they can run their race with the foundation you've helped create. And so on and so forth.
3. THE WITNESSES
I used to feel so convicted by this verse: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses..." scared by the thought of this large cloud of witnesses watching me sin and fall short and be such an imperfect vessel. Especially, when I realized the makeup of these witnesses, when I realized who they were. The hall-of-famers in Hebrews 11, my Biblical heroes whose stories I’ve read a hundred times, who paved the way before me. I mean, if that’s not pressure for perfection I don’t know what is? Recently though, in that same conversation with my cousin I mentioned earlier (we be getting real deep), God opened my eyes to something spectacular through something He shared with her. He gave her this beautiful vision for her life and clarity for the situation she was dealing with during this time; a situation of uncertainty. He showed her all of the people in scripture who had come before her. People afraid and anxious, just like she was and He told her, "these are the ones who have gone before you" into uncertainty, into seasons of struggle. And as she was telling me about what God showed her, I saw the imagery. Esther walking into the king’s throne room uncertain and afraid but being obedient to God nevertheless, hoping to save her people. Daniel walking into the lion’s den, Moses standing in front of pharaoh knowing his own inadequacies but trusting God to somehow bridge the gap. Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego about to step into the fiery furnace not knowing the outcome. These are the races that were run before you. These are the witnesses cheering you on from the sidelines who know what it feels like to be scared and still have faith. Who know what it is to sweat through their clothes with anxiety and uncertainty, hoping against hope for God to come through. You stand with generations of believers who have been where you are and know how it feels to run this race. They know how those weights feels and how those sins entangle you. They know and they’re watching, cheering you on from the sidelines, loving you even when you fall cause they remember how it felt when they fell to their knees bruised and scraped like you just did moments ago.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel convicted by the thought of who was sitting on the sidelines watching me run my race, I felt validated! I felt seen and I felt understood and loved. It’s my turn to carry the baton, it’s my turn to run my race and every believer, every biblical hero that came before me is cheering me on like my little middle school class. Some of them yelling “Run faster”, some of them shouting “you can do it, grab it and run” whenever I drop the baton and still others, hooting and hollering because I’m running as fast as I can and they’re proud of me.
Then there’s the man at the finish line... the one who paved the way for all of us, the one who sweat and cried and grieved just like we did. My prize. Your prize, cheering you on from the finish line shouting “Run to me! You’ve got it, keep going and run to me!”. Bearing witness to our struggles, not holding it against us when we fall short, looking on with great compassion. And then, there! Running beside you along the sidelines like a helicopter parent who just can’t stand still with all the excitement is your heavenly father. Right there, right beside you, running with you and running ahead of you, making sure the track is prepared for you, knowing what’s around the next turn and telling you how to navigate it. Then there’s the Holy Spirit alive and empowering inside of you, giving you wisdom and energy, helping you make positive decisions during your race so you can jump over the hurdles along the path and keep going.
You are so equipped to run this race!
I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it but take a second and look up.
You’ve got a crowd cheering you on, a sweaty bloody crowd whose feet have hit the same pavement as yours.
You can put down the weights, like they did. You can throw off the sin, like Christ did. You can pick up your baton when you fall, and run with confidence and maybe, even do it better than they did because you’ve got their insight. You've got their stories and the Spirit of the living God to guide you. Your witnesses are the evidence that your race can be run and the prize can be won.
Jesus is the evidence that you have never been alone and the odds are stacked in your favor because in case you didn't already know this, the race is fixed friend!
It’s rigged for your victory.
No matter what hurdles you face or what burdens get thrown onto your shoulders, you have a savior who tore through every hurdle and bore every burden so you could be the light and run wild and free.
(Like a middle school child all arms and legs and lungs)
So, as you return to your busy lives and forget all about my little corner of the internet where you read this blog post today, do yourself a favor:
Don’t forget who has gone before you and remember to keep your pace. Run for it! Run for it with everything you've got!
No matter what happens on that track. No matter how many times you drop the baton, pick it up! Keep running, keep going and press on towards your prize.
He’s waiting for you.
( By the way, this race is the real deal, no plastic Frisbees for prizes here.
I’m just saying. Maybe middle school me was wise enough to recognize that the presidential relay race wasn’t worth the sweat when there was a crown waiting for me somewhere else.
Or maybe I was just out of shape and annoyed. Round is a shape though.)
2 Timothy 4:7-8
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me in the future the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved His appearing."
Galatians 5:7-8
"You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you."
Isaiah 40:31
"but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
"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. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it a slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. "
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