By My Spirit

Hopefully this post will explain itself...it is based on my experiences at the Midwest Conference Cross Country Championships on October 30th. I wrote this piece and have to decided to publish it for you here.

Do you know Zechariah 4:6? If you had asked me to say it anytime before I awoke on race day, I wouldn’t have known where to start. But as I prepared to run in one of my final races for the season the same way I’d start any day, with prayer and the Word, I was drawn to this particular verse: Not by strength or by might, but by My Spirit.

This was only my twelfth race ever. My season had been so mediocre and I was getting frustrated. Two awful meets in a row, and a dreadful last tune up workout had left my confidence shattered into pieces. I took comfort in the fact that God doesn’t care if I’m a fast runner; He loves me for who I am, but I wanted to do well as an act of worship for the body He gave me. I prayed continually for strength, for perseverance. Only that’s not what I needed. I needed to let go and let God. I’d put in all the work, I had the desire, I just had to lay down my pride and surrender my race to the Lord.

At the line, I had the perfect combination of peace and excitement, equal parts thought and recklessness. I started the race with this prayer, “Father, let today be for Your glory. I am giving these next 3.74 miles to You, Lord, to do with what You will. Forgetting what is behind, and reaching forward to what is ahead I pursue as my goal the eternal prize in the heavenly call of Christ Jesus my Lord” The gun went off with suddenly and the digital beep of over a hundred watches echoed the golf course. Here we go.

I got going, and felt overwhelmed. This course was a tease – since one loop was done twice, but not twice in a row, we passed the sign for the 3rd mile just a few hundred meters into the race. Torture. I felt tired so early in, and when I hit a hill, I started to doubt. But I looked at my left hand, where I’d written, “By My Spirit”, and knew that God had me. I pressed on to the first mile, where I was surprised to hear I was far under any time I’d ever been. There was a girl from another team who was running just a little ahead of me. I wanted to pass her; I knew that I would, it was just a matter of when.

The second mile is so hard in the 6k. I felt like I couldn’t. But then the Lord said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for You, for My power is perfected in weakness’. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. How awesome it is to have the Word of the Lord written on my heart! And, by the cheers of the men’s team, I passed that girl, not long before mile two ended, and never looked back. Mile three took me to no man’s land. I couldn’t see anyone ahead of me, and the crowds were all gathered to watch the conference champion. But I sang to myself from Times, by Tenth Avenue North, “The times you doubt Me, when you can’t feel, the times that you’ve questioned ‘is this for real?...The times you’re broken, the times that you mend, the times you hate Me and the times that you bend…The times you’re hurting…In times of confusion and chaos and pain…My love I will keep you by my power alone”.

The power of the Almighty God and Creator of the universe, made perfect in my utter weakness and surrender. I kept working so hard, fighting for every step. Our assistant coach, my pole vault coach, Karl, sat at the 5k marker, waiting. I knew why he was watching so closely. I had the potential to hit a 5k pr, and milestone – in the middle of my 6k nonetheless! Sure enough, with a 32 second pr, 7 seconds under that elusive time…and a thousand meters to go. I wanted to stop right there. Honestly. My strength was gone, but as I worked it up that hill once more, again, “Not by strength or by might, but by My Spirit”. God had this in the bag. A teammate enthusiastically yelled, “keep fighting!” I prayed, “I can’t do this Lord, but You can. Not by my strength or my might, but by Your Spirit alone”

When I didn’t know how much further I could go, I managed to utter a “how far?” Karl responded, “less than 500. You’ve got this – runway!” Runway, as in pole vault runway, was my key word. It made me run fast, my legs striding out, and a slight forward lean. He’d actually brought the pole all the way to the meet, just for me. I started the acceleration; this was a huge pr. It got faster as I approached the finish shute, ending with a kick to be remembered, greeted by my head coach “aw yeah!”

That girl who paced me, the one I passed – I shook her hand, and she was so sweet. I met up with a girl from my high school at another school and exchanged hugs and laughs.

And then I was surrounded by teammates – laughing, hugging, talking, exclaiming, playing. As much I love the guys’ team, it’s the ladies I have the biggest heart for. We all worked so hard, together. We’ve seen every bit of stress, all the anxiety, the nerves, the tears, the pain, the sickness, but have been able to share in the laughs, the fun, the jokes, the dancing, the love.

And as we drove away, I thought about the race.
For all the stress that is cross country – the practices, the races – I felt like I should have been happier. I was pretty happy, but not excited. It was more relief. But I looked all around me, and I was so proud of every single girl. We had pr’s ranging from 14 seconds to 244 seconds, with my own being 208 seconds.

And I realized I never wanted that pr. If it had truly been the desire of the heart, I would have been incredibly stoked about it. No, the longing of my heart is to be found and fulfilled by Christ. “Not by strength or by might, but by My Spirit” As I reached that conclusion, I was completely flooded with pure joy and unreasonable happiness; I had been filled with the Spirit of my Lord.



So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by strength, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty. Zechariah 4:6

He will guard the feet of his faithful servants, but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness. It is not by strength that one prevails. 1 Samuel 2:9