Running

I never liked running when I was younger. I was good at sports, but stamina was always one of my weaknesses.

Running was the kind of thing I assumed I simply wasn’t built for.

That’s part of what eventually made it meaningful. It became a way of confronting something I had always been bad at, and finding out I could get good at it.

At first, running was practical. I needed to lose weight, and over time it became one of the tools that helped me lose more than 80 pounds.

But the physical change made me confront something deeper. I had spent years consulting entrepreneurs and talking about discipline, execution, and doing difficult things. Talking about discipline while being overweight had started to feel hypocritical. I had to admit there were areas of my own life where I wasn’t living with the discipline I expected from other people.

I didn’t want discipline to be something I only talked about.

My faith made that conviction even harder to ignore.

As a Christian, I believe my body is something I’ve been given to steward. For me, being significantly overweight exposed areas where I lacked self-control, and where food had more power over me than it should have.

Scripture speaks seriously about self-control and about gluttony, and self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit. I couldn’t separate those things from the way I was living.

Getting healthier became one way of bringing another part of my life under obedience.

Eventually, running stopped being something I did just to lose weight.

I came to love distance running because it teaches endurance. You have to count the cost of the distance before you start. You have to know when to push and when to hold back, and settle into a pace you can sustain instead of running the first mile as if it were the last. Then you have to keep going when it gets uncomfortable.

There is something deeply biblical about that to me. Scripture keeps returning to the picture of running a race: endurance, discipline, finishing well. Distance running gives me a physical way to practice those ideas.

Running is hard, and that’s one of the reasons I value it. Choosing to do difficult things sharpens my mind and reminds me that discomfort isn’t always something to escape.

Running has also started becoming part of how I think about ministry.

I’ve begun running with Scripture on my back. It has already become a conversation starter, which is exactly the point.

I want Christians to take health, fitness, discipline, and stewardship more seriously. Those things should never replace spiritual maturity, but I don’t think we should treat the body as though it has nothing to do with discipleship either.

I want the way I run, train, and carry myself to point beyond me.