PursuitSample

Running Together! - Devotion with Ps Lydia Mifsud

As a kid, my favourite event on a school sports day was the relay race. It always seemed to have a bit more of a buzz of excitement around it than the individual events.

As a team, we would strategise as to who would be best to start and who would be best to sprint home in that final quarter of the race. It was so much fun competing together as a team. That sense of camaraderie and collective joy was powerful, regardless of winning, but if you won, celebrating together was all the sweeter.

We read about the power of standing together in Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12. For, when facing adversity, the Bible is clear that together we can see each other through to overcome, to find warmth and comfort, and to ultimately succeed.

It is God’s plan that we run this race of salvation together as an interdependent body, sharing those many unique gifts God has placed in each of us. (1 Peter 4:10)

However, for this plan to work, we must keep on trusting God, every day, to help us navigate all of our relationships. Particularly on the rough days, so that we don’t fall into the trap of self-protection, building walls around our hearts that isolate us, to prevent getting hurt.

In a time such as this, with common fears and concerns experienced across the globe, we have a unique opportunity to lift each other, to step out of our comfort zone, and to speak hope and life, rising above the common rhetoric of fear and judgement.

When we choose vulnerability over comfort, we are being courageous, as we have been commanded. (Joshua 1:9)

When we are brave and love others this way, we prevent alienating and isolating ourselves, and in turn others, through acts of selflessness, made possible by the Spirit of God at work in us.

In Psalm 139: 32 we are encouraged, that as we run in the path of His commands that He broadens our understanding.

Let’s choose to run into 2022 together, in the unity of His Spirit, full of courageous love and growing in the understanding God has promised to us.

Prayer:

Father God, thank You! Because You commanded us to be courageous, we know, in Your strength, this is possible. Help us to continually return to You for help when we are struggling and to reach out to each other in the Spirit of unity to which You have called us. Amen.