“LET’S DO HARD THINGS THIS YEAR FOR GOD”

That’s the text message I sent to my daughters back in January when I ran two and a half miles to Starbucks. Minutes after sending that text, God got in our conversation when Coach Bennet, on the Nike Running Club app, surprisingly said something like, “This isn’t about learning to run hard. This is about learning to do hard things in your life.” Wink! Wink!

But, boy oh boy, we had no idea how HARD this year would be! I remember laughing with God, ‘I didn’t mean this hard!!!’ But looking back over the entire year, I’m thankful for the difficult experiences that had me RUNNING to God, looking for His help and support.

“The LORD will perfect that which concerns me;”

I’m a first-hand witness to God’s love and loyalty. No matter how many times I fell and failed, He would find some way to let me know that His invisible Presence was there with me. His love will help me back up and bring me closer to Him. There were some difficult lessons He wanted me to learn and pass on to you guys:

“You can’t beat God’s school of HARD LESSONS! It’s a constant struggle and a strong fight to be this person who I know He is calling me to be, but that’s the challenge for us all: For God to be the Guide of our hearts and to make some super tough decisions from His GOD IS LOVE perspective. He wants to remove the weeds from our hearts like bitterness, envy, jealousy, hate, greed, selfishness, temptations, evil thoughts, anger, doing and saying hurtful things and replace them with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with and forgiving each other, clothing ourselves ALWAYS in love. Phew! Did you get that?

That means holding back some words, forgiving some hurts, sometimes pretending to be deaf, dumb and blind when need be, NOT GIVING UP, and be the awesome, loving people seeking to please God in everything we say, everything we do and everywhere we go. We have to keep our eyes fixed on God seeking His guidance on a moment-by-moment basis. Of course, we’re not going to get it right all the time, but we keep striving to improve – constant and never-ending improvement. And if you fall a million times, you get up a million and one!

OUR REWARD IS WITH GOD! Honestly, on my run yesterday with Him, I was amazed at the difference in myself from just a few months ago to now. God has enormously helped me! Don’t miss out on a life close to God!

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