For thought and meditation

[rl69]

You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

—Galatians 5:7

One of the unique qualities of retired sprinter Usain Bolt was that he not only ran so fast, but he started fast, stayed fast, and finished fast. He never slowed down. He effectively left his competitors in the dust.

Some people run the race of life like that. They’ll start out with a bang. They’ll run full speed. And they’ll end victoriously. There are others who start fast, but they’ll slow down. Sometimes they’ll even stumble and fall, but they get up at the end and make it across the finish line. Then there are some who start but never finish at all.

Who determines how you will run the race of life? You might be surprised by my answer: You do. God gives you everything you need. He gives you all of the power and all of the resources, but it is up to you to take hold of those resources. God doesn’t do the running for us. But we run the race for His glory.

It’s really up to you as to how you will run the race of life. You decide whether you’re going to be a world changer or whether the world is going to change you. World changers don’t march lockstep with current culture. World changers follow Christ and affect their surroundings more than their surroundings affect them. World changers are thermostats, not thermometers. They control the temperature. They set the pace. They think for themselves.

Show me someone who reads the Bible, does what God tells him or her to do, and follows Jesus, and I’ll show you a rebel in today’s culture. That is what a world changer is.

If you have fallen, if you have stumbled, get up and start running again. God gives second chances. You can still finish the race.

[Goatwhiskers]

Amen, Ronnie. At my age I don't expect to change the world, but it is reassuring to know that I'm still in the race. On the other hand, who can say what God's plan might be? GW

[USMC87]

Thank you for a great start of the day, Amen.

[Blackwater]

Fast is good, but when studying my Lord, I always find it best to proceed slowly and deliberately. That, though, seems to wind up making me learn faster and more deeply, so ..... sometimes "slow is fastest" and "fast is the slowest." The big trick is to keep our expectations under control, and our seeking mechanisms always honed and busy. Our simple human minds cannot proceed any faster than we can think, and when compared to God's mind, as with a super computer, we think as slowly as cold molasses in the wintertime. But that's no excuse to not use our faculties to know our Lord, and understand His will for us. We spend so much time asking questions, and so little seeking the answers. We live in a world where answers are not provided readily and virtually instantly to us on our various electronic devices. God's mind leaves even the best of those in the dust! And our ability to process and internalize the info we can now find, is no greater than it was back when we were building, hunting and shaping our world with stones. We LIKE to think of ourselves as "geniuses," but in truth, we can be dumber than a willful cow, and those creatures can do the dumbest things in the world!!! Our egos are MUCH larger than they rightfully ought to be. And there's always a price to be paid for believing ourselves to be wiser, more powerful, and tougher than we really truly are. Lood all around us. Does it LOOK like we're all geniuses, with the way things are working these days???? 'Nuff said!

[Boaz]

A good reminder for me . Thank you Ronnie .