Good Morning Gorgeous,

It’s a brand new day. A fresh new start. A new day to rise up and walk in victory.

A new day to push through and go after all that God has called you to.

A new day to cry out to the Lord, “Here I am. All for You.”

A new day to leave yesterday in the dust and put down every heavy weight holding you back and run the race set before you with strength and renewed endurance.

God has planned good things for you. He has carved out a destiny and future that are for good and not harm. He is not plotting against you. He is not angry with you. And He is not punishing you. He is drawing you to Himself with His radical, lay His whole life down love.

And serving the Lord and running our race with endurance doesn’t always look like what you may picture in your mind when you think of a race. Serving Jesus fully and completely sometimes looks counter to a worldly race. Instead of running toward a prize that is temporary and fleeting, you are running for eternal treasures.

Treasures that nothing on earth can destroy. Treasures that cannot be taken from you or harmed by the elements of life. And sometimes the race is run by sitting at the feet of Jesus learning to be still and receive.

Sometimes staying in the race looks opposite to what the world would say.

The world tells you to hurry up and get all you can while you are here. Jesus says, “Go after me, and everything else will be given to you.”

The world tells you to run, work, run, work harder, don’t stop lest you fall behind. Jesus says, “Pause and take time to rest. Remember the Sabbath. Take my lead, and learn to rest in Me.”

The world tells you to cover up your scars, your past, and only reveal the shiny, polished parts. Jesus says, “Bring me all of you. Let me heal you, dress your wounds, and make a beautiful message of hope and redemption out of your mess.”

The world places heavy burdens on us. Jesus says, “Here let me carry that. You take mine. It’s lighter.”

Friends, in these last 21 days, some of the days have been so filled with an awareness of His Presence, and some of the days have been rather ordinary.

Not every day felt like anything was shifting or changing or being renewed. Some days felt lonely and painful. Some days felt scary and hard.

But God has been so good and gracious and merciful and compassionate to me as I sought Him in new ways.

Resting in Jesus doesn’t come natural for me at all.

Pausing completely from all of my “work” for Jesus and just sitting with Him and learning to listen is not easy for me. I want to get up and serve Him.

He is teaching me that to serve Him, I must take time to learn more about the One that I am serving. And to learn about Him, I must sit with Him. Eye to eye. Distraction free sitting. And in that space of sitting, He has treasures for me that make the serving part easy and rather light.

In the sitting, He removes tasks and assignments off of my plate that I believed were from Him, but instead they were my own fleshly desires or burdens the world heaped on me.

He reveals to me:

Expectations that were never His.

Assignments He never gave me.

Work that was ill fitting and uncomfortable.

As we sit with the Lord and just take pleasure in Him alone, our running track comes into clarity. Our race that we are called to run becomes doable.

It’s still hard, but all the weights that were never ours get laid down. And what used to seem impossible now becomes a race we can run and run and run all the way to our final breath.

Dear Heavenly Father,

You are a goood Father. Your goodness is mind blowing. Your mercy is hard to fathom. You guide us with such patience and gentleness. Lord, show us how to rest. Teach us to rest in You. Teach us what to carry and what to lay down. Reveal to each of us what weights we need to strip off. Show us which ones aren’t ours to run with. Give us strength to say no to any assignments not from heaven and power to say yes to every one that is for us. Give us clarity and discernment to tell the difference between assignments that look good and assignments that are from You and proper fitting. Lord, let us run this race You’ve set before us all the way to end with endurance and faith.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Blessings and Rest in Jesus,

Vanessa Lynn