Striving

Jess Movold is an elite running coach in New York City. In an article for Runner’s World she discussed the top five principles for successful running. Factors like finishing a marathon, self-discipline, and a workout plan, are essential for guiding runners through a season. But number one on her list to maintaining a long-term relationship with running is finding what really drives you, whether it's a new sense of confidence or getting off medication.

Movold says,

Identifying this unlocks everything that's possible for a runner. That understanding of why you put on your running shoes can be used to hold yourself accountable when you're distracted or discouraged by short-term goals. Whether or not you nail a speed session, those inner passions will persist to drive you.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scripture describes the Christian life as a race. So, we regularly set goals and we develop structured plans to accomplish these goals. But too often our goals go unrealized and we wonder why. Maybe Movold’s advice applies to spiritual marathons as well. Identifying your motivation unlocks everything that is possible for a Christian. Why do you run?

In an interview with Esquire Magazine, former Beatles star Paul McCartney, now aged 82 (his birthday is June 1942), was asked if he felt that he still had something to prove. McCartney responded:

Yeah, all the time. And it is a silly feeling. And I do actually sometimes talk to myself and say, "Wait a minute: look at this little mountain of achievements. There's an awful lot of them. Isn't that enough?" But maybe I could do it a bit better. Maybe I could write something that's just more relevant or new. And that always drags you forward. I mean, I never felt like, "Oh, I did good." Nobody does. Even at the height of the Beatles. I prefer to think there's something I'm not doing quite right, so I'm constantly working on it. I always was, we always were. I mean, look at John [Lennon], a mass of paranoia and worries about whether he's doing it right. You only have to listen to his lyrics. I think that's just artists in general.

When a mountain is in your way what do you do? Just ask Ramchandra Das, 53, who lives in Bihar, India. In order to access nearby fields for food and work, Das and his fellow villagers had to take a 4.3-mile trek around a mountain. Fed up with the obstacle, Das did something about it. With just a hammer and chisel, he cut a 33-foot-long, 13-foot-wide tunnel through a narrow area of the mountain. It took Das fourteen years to complete the task. And get this: Das isn't the first person to do such a thing. He was inspired by another villager who cut a 393 feet-long, 33 feet-wide, 26 feet-high passage through another mountain so that villagers could reach a local hospital. That man was motivated to do so when his wife died because he was unable to get her to the hospital.

It is a mistake to be always turning back to recover the past. The law for Christian living is not backward, but forward; not for experiences that lie behind, but for doing the will of God, which is always ahead and beckoning us to follow. Leave the things that are behind, and reach forward to those that are before, for on each new height to which we attain, there are the appropriate joys that befit the new experience. Don't fret because life's joys are fled. There are more in front. Look up, press forward, the best is yet to be!

It is a mistake to be always turning back to recover the past. The law for Christian living is not backward, but forward; not for experiences that lie behind, but for doing the will of God, which is always ahead and beckoning us to follow. Leave the things that are behind, and reach forward to those that are before, for on each new height to which we attain, there are the appropriate joys that befit the new experience. Don't fret because life's joys are fled. There are more in front. Look up, press forward, the best is yet to be!

At the end of the Summer Olympics, athletes will be participating in a special event, retracing the long distance run from which the Olympic event got its name. In 490 B.C. Pheidippides ran 26 miles to warn of the impending attack of the Persians upon his country. The route began in Marathon and ended in Sparta. Soon after he reached Sparta, Pheidippides died.

Analyzing lunar records, astronomers at Texas State University believe the cause of his death was due to heat stroke. Their research indicates the runner may have raced in temperatures reaching 102 degrees. (Modern runners begin in the evening.) The New Scientist quotes researcher Russell Doescher as saying: "It seems plausible that someone running for all he's got, trying to save his fellow citizens, could keel over and die."

The Apostle Paul gave a Pheidippides-like effort. Looking back on his life he was able to say: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7).

Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. Born prematurely, doctors did not expect Wilma to survive. She did, but at the age of four, she contracted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, leaving her left leg paralyzed. She learned to walk with the aid of a metal brace.

When Wilma was nine-years-old, she removed the leg brace and began walking without it. By age 13, she developed a rhythmic walk. That same year, she decided to begin running. She entered her first race and came in last. For the next three years, Wilma came in dead last in every race she entered. But she kept on running, and one day she won. Eventually, the little girl who was not supposed to live, and then who was not supposed to be able to walk, would win three gold medals in Rome's 1960 Olympic games.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, celebrity Brad Pitt reflected on his lead role in the movie Fight Club, which is about a man who has the American dream and yet remains unsatisfied:

Pitt: Man, I know all these things are supposed to seem important to us—the car, the condo, our version of success—but if that's the case, why is the general feeling out there reflecting more impotence and isolation and desperation and loneliness? If you ask me, I say toss all this—we gotta find something else. Because all I know is that at this point in time, we are heading for a dead end, a numbing of the soul, a complete atrophy of the spiritual being. And I don't want that.

Rolling Stone: So if we're heading toward this kind of existential dead end in society, what do you think should happen?

Pitt: Hey, man, I don't have those answers yet. The emphasis now is on success and personal gain. [smiles] I'm sitting in it, and I'm telling you, that's not it. I'm the guy who's got everything. I know. But I'm telling you, once you've got everything, then you're just left with yourself. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it doesn't help you sleep any better, and you don't wake up any better because of it.

In Time Lev Grossman writes:

Every year on the first Saturday in December, twenty-five hundred of the most brilliant college students in North America take what may be the hardest math test in the world—the Putnam Competition. How tough is it? Although there are only twelve questions, the test lasts six hours. And although these are the best and brainiest young minds our country has to offer, the median score on last year's test was one point. Out of a possible 120.

There's an even tougher and higher standard: God's holiness.

In a joint interview, supermodels Kim Alexis, Carol Alt, and Beverly Johnson—who collectively have appeared on more than 2,000 magazine covers—spoke frankly about the stresses and health problems of struggling to stay at the peak in the beauty business.

Alexis, who is five-feet-ten-inches tall, admits that after being discovered by a talent scout, the owner of New York City's Elite modeling agency guaranteed her a certain amount of money if she lost 15 pounds. At the time, she weighed 145 pounds. "I cried for the first year of my career," Alexis confesses honestly. "I remember trying every fad diet. I remember starving myself for four days in a row. I remember trying the Atkins diet, which was low carbohydrate, high protein. If I didn't drop 10 pounds in a week, I was on another diet."

Carol Alt also dieted and exercised strenuously to force her five-foot-eight-inch frame down to an unnaturally slender 115 pounds. On her first modeling job, she passed out and fell into fellow model Kelly Emberg's arms. "An editor had given me a month to lose 12 pounds," Alt explains. "If I did, she promised me a trip to Rome. So I stopped eating."

As a highly paid fashion model and cover girl, Beverly Johnson frequently found herself doing exactly the same thing. "I ate nothing. I mean nothing," she says. "From the moment I took my first picture, I thought it would be my last, and from the moment I started modeling at 17 years old, I thought that the next 16-year-old girl who came in would be better than me." Eventually ending up with bulimia, anorexia, and a thyroid problem, Beverly attributes her ailments to self-imposed starvation and crash dieting. "In our profession, clothes look better on a hanger, so you have to look like a hanger."

A young boy went to the local store with his mother. The shop owner, a kindly man, passed him a large jar of suckers and invited him to help himself to a handful. Uncharacteristically, the boy held back. So the shop owner pulled out a handful for him.

When outside, the boy's mother asked why he had suddenly been so shy and wouldn't take a handful of suckers when offered.

The boy replied, "Because his hand is much bigger than mine!"

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

The only way to be "truly" consistent is as a non-Christian. If we are to be Christians at all, we will be inconsistent ones. We will be right some of the time and wrong some of the time. What Jesus asks of us is that we strive to take the "right some of the time" and make it an ever-increasing portion of the time (Christian growth).

I think there are two very heartening things about our day. First, we are all admitting we need some answers. That in itself is encouraging. We are asking. We are seeking. We are knocking. Because of our training or background or personality or a combination of these and other things, we ask in different ways. But we are asking. But it also is true that just as surely as we are looking in different ways, answers are coming to us in a diversity which reflects the mystery of God himself. The wonderful thing is that he is making certain that we are receiving and that we are finding and that doors are being opened to us.

Runner's World (8/91) told the story of Beth Anne DeCiantis's attempt to qualify for the 1992 Olympic Trials marathon. A female runner must complete the 26-mile, 385-yard race in less than two hours, 45 minutes to compete at the Olympic Trials.

Beth started strong but began having trouble around mile 23. She reached the final straightaway at 2:43, with just two minutes left to qualify. Two hundred yards from the finish, she stumbled and fell. Dazed, she stayed down for twenty seconds. The crowd yelled, "Get up!" The clock was ticking--2:44, less than a minute to go.

Beth Anne staggered to her feet and began walking. Five yards short of the finish, with 10 seconds to go, she fell again. She began to crawl, the crowd cheering her on, and crossed the finish line on her hands and knees. Her time? Two hours, 44 minutes, 57 seconds.

Hebrews 12:1 reminds us to run our race with perseverance and never give up.

We are told that when Jacob set out to journey from Beersheba to Haran, he stopped at a certain place for the night and had a dream. What did he dream? A stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it. Some were going from the earth to the heaven, others from the heaven to the earth.

The great Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudlikov once said that this comes to teach us the following. A man does not always remain at the same stage. He is always ascending or descending. When he reaches the top, he must concern himself with the probability that he will fall. When he reaches the bottom, he must strive once again to climb to the top. That is the nature of man. When the soul of a man is in its darkest night, he must strive constantly for new light. When one thinks there is only an end, that is when one must struggle for the new beginning.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

When religion is in a state of quiet and prosperity ... the soldiers of the church militant will then tend to forget they are at war. Their ardor slackens and their zeal languishes. John Owen has made an apt comparison: religion in a state of prosperity is like a colony that is long settled in a strange country. It is gradually assimilated in features, demeanor and language to the native inhabitants until at length every vestige of its distinctiveness had died away.

It doesn't take much to say "I quit." It takes a lot more to say "I'll try."