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On Your Mark: Get Set?

Blog / Produced by The High Calling
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Once when I asked a friend how she was doing, she said, “Truthfully, I feel as if my life is going nowhere. I can’t get beyond Get on your mark, get set . . . get set, get set. I’m forever set, but I never go. A great bunch of spiritual cheerleaders are rooting for me, but I feel more comfortable on the bench than in the game.”

I told my friend that everyone to some degree fails to enter life fully. We all miss out on opportunities to learn and discover. We let mistakes in our past or fear of the unknown prevent our living the abundant life that Jesus promised. But why is that? Why do some people seem to run all the way in the marathon of life while others limp or crawl to the finish line?

What are we afraid of?

There is a radio message on this site about a Catholic priest that had gone to visit Mother Teresa in Calcutta and work for a month at the “house of the dying.” More deeply, he sought a clear answer to the question of how to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning, when he met with Mother Teresa, she asked what she could do for him, and he asked her to pray for him.

“What do you want me to pray?” she said.

Giving voice to what had brought him halfway around the world, he said, “Pray that I have clarity.”

Mother Teresa shook her head. “No, clarity is the thing you must let go of,” she said.

But Mother Teresa herself seemed to have such clarity, he said. And she laughed. “I have never had clarity,” she said. “I have only had trust. So I will pray for you to have trust.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV) says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” An important word in that passage is will—highlighted in my Bible. That promise is our confidence to step out and enter life to the fullest.

We all can’t go to the Mother Teresas and Billy Grahams of this world for specific answers, help, and encouragement, but we all have spiritual friends and companions. Talk to them; trust them with your questions. God has his spiritual saints all around us, and they are rooting for us to get on our marks, get set, and go.
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