Running is not everything—there is much in the way we select! A swift foot over hill and down dale will not keep pace with a slower traveler on level ground.

How is it with your spiritual journey? Are you laboring up the hill of your own works? Down into the ravines of your own humiliations and resolutions? Or do you run by the plain way of "Believe and live"?

How blessed it is to wait upon the Lord by faith! The soul runs without weariness and walks without fainting in the way of believing. Christ Jesus is the way of life, and he is a plain way, a pleasant way, a way suitable for the tottering feet and feeble knees of trembling sinners. Am I found in this way? Or am I hunting after another track—one that priestcraft or philosophy promises me?

I read that the way of holiness is so clear that the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err in it. Have I been delivered from proud reason? Have I been brought as a little child to rest in Jesus' love and blood? If so, by God's grace I shall outrun the strongest runner who chooses any other path.

This truth profits me in my daily cares and needs. My wisest course is to go at once to my God, not to wander in a roundabout manner from this friend to that. He knows my wants and can relieve them—to whom should I go but to himself? By the direct appeal of prayer and the plain argument of the promise! "Straightforward makes the best runner." I will not parley with the servants but hasten to their Master.

Reading this passage, it strikes me—if men compete with each other in common races, if one outruns the other, shouldn't I run with solemn earnestness so that I may obtain the prize?

Lord, help me to gird up the loins of my mind! May I press forward toward the mark for the prize of my high calling of God in Christ Jesus.