5.6 Miles

The Lord your God is with you

He is mighty to save

He will take great delight in you

He will quiet you with His love

He will rejoice over you with singing.

~Zephaniah 3:17

I like running.  I like England.  I like running in England.

Last Saturday a good friend, Catherine, and I decided to go for a bit of a run together.  So this is where we went.  As you can see from the above picture - It was quite the run.  It was quite the beautiful run as well.  The sun was shining beautifully and we just were running through the open fields and through the woods and it was just really great.  5.6 miles.  Let me just say that again - 5.6 MILES.  Yep, that happened.  That's a lot for me.  I may have been hurting a bit the next day but it was totally worth it.

There was one point during our run that I felt that I needed to stop and walk for a second.  But Catherine looked over and said - Really?  Are you sure? - Then I thought, you know what?  No, I don't need to stop, let's keep running.  So we did and I was fine.  Just one of the many reasons why it is so much better to run with someone else.  It's so much better to have someone there that will push you and encourage you to know that you can do it no matter how difficult it may be and no matter how much it may hurt.  I ran without stopping so much more that day then I ever thought I could.

It is our certainty of knowing His unrelenting love for us, even in the midst of our weakness and failure that leads to the fullness of His life. ~He Loves Me

This is something that I have been learning a lot this past week.  Learning how be secure in His presence knowing and trusting that He loves me so much.  That is all that He asks of us.  His deepest desire is not all of the stuff that we can do, but it is just for us to be, for us to be in a deeper relationship with Him, for us to be loved by Him and love Him in return.  It is in our becoming that we will do all the stuff and we will do it with the confidence that is found in Him.

There are so many times that I feel like I can't do something because it’s hard or I’m tired but I know that I will have God running right next to me saying - Really?  Are you sure you want to stop?  I can look over at Him and realize that it is because of His love and the confidence that I can find in His love that I will be able to push through no matter what it is.  I'd say that's pretty great. 

Such confidence we have through Christ before God.  Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.

~2 Corinthians 3:4-5