Have you forsaken your race?

In 2025, I went swimming just six times and didn't participate in any competitions because unexpected opportunities came up.   When my life started to settle back down into its natural rhythm at the end of the year, I started to get back into swimming again.   I kept wanting to put it off until the start of 2026. Why? It was just hard to get back into something that I had taken a hiatus from, plus I knew that I had lost some endurance levels that I would need to rebuild.

                Jumping back into my swimming race made me think about how I almost abandoned my spiritual race when I went through the storm of my life from 2012-2019, which involved a character assassination.  You see, I was in survival mode during those years. Trying to keep one foot in front of the other with my new branding as a CK (criminal’s kid).  I never once prayed for God’s deliverance, because I never heard of someone coming to know Christ through Him restoring their reputation.  As I begin 2026, I’ve learned that God wants us to receive instruction on how to hear from Him even through life’s most impossible situations that we find ourselves in.

“I never once prayed for God’s deliverance, because I never heard of someone coming to know Christ through Him restoring their reputation.”

                If we call ourselves Christians, then that means that we are filled with the Holy Spirit and that we have a heavenly mindset - a different way of thinking. When we look at the word race, we automatically think about the kind of races that we see every day: a race in which everyone has the same course and a race that involves competitors. Our spiritual race needs to be visualized in the correct way, through a heavenly mindset. Our spiritual races are all unique; therefore, we do not have the same course, nor do we have any competitors. Our coach, God, always gives us one-on-one guidance on how to remove those obstacles that we find in our paths to be so overwhelming. When we learn not to look to the right or left at others going through their races, it allows us to keep our focus ahead while remembering what’s behind (so we look back to see how God gave us tips in removing that impossible obstacle that once stood in our path).

                Keeping our focus ahead and behind is very difficult because in our physical races, like swimming, the focus is always centered around how we measure up to others. How is our performance level compared with others?  We are bombarded with the earthly definition of race.  It is imperative to remind ourselves that our spiritual race is very different.

                So jump back into your spiritual race and keep your eyes ahead or behind to focus on your moving forward. Every time you look to the side at another’s race, the enemy keeps you stuck from moving forward in your race, possibly abandoning it altogether.