"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"
--2 Corinthians 5:17
"Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”"
--Matthew 19:26

Philippians 4:13.  Some of you know it because it's a "life verse"  Some of you know it because of Tim Tebow.  Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about, and it looks like I'm ordering filipino food from a Chinese Take-out restaurant.

In any case it mostly goes like this: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength..."

With every runner/athlete I've encountered who knows anything about Jesus (I refer again to Tim Tebow), I hear them refer to this as their favorite or "motivational" verse.

Sometimes, I read those verses above and Philippians 4:13 like I read the label on a cereal box.  It’s more of a mental exercise in proficiency while I keep on eating rather than taking a minute to process what I just read.  Maybe that's why it's not my race verse.  Let me explain.

This was me in 2005:

5'4" and over 200lbs (which is not healthy, for those of you who haven't gathered that).  My idea of exercise was holding the lounge chair down, and bowling with a desire to be active being minimal to nil.  Weight/image/self-worth…those have all been things that have been deep struggles in my life.  Some people can't go a day without a glass of alcohol, but I couldn't go a day actually liking myself for the longest time.  Why?  Well, we could be here all day with all the analyzation I've done over the past few years to figure that one out.  The long and the short of it is that I believed a lot of lies about myself and about those around me for a long time.

Sin is like that.  A friend put it this way:  sin is "any attitude which denies others' or our own identity or ability in Christ to be awesome."

I believed in my lack of awesomness for a long time, and I was pretty jealous of other people's awesomness for a long time too.  Even after experiencing redeeming Love and doing the hard work of going through replacing lies with Truth, I still occasionally catch myself playing comparison games.  Which leads me to the awesome part of the recent story.

From 2005 on, through various stages of growth with various guides in various aspects of my life, I found myself training for a Sprint Triathlon this year.  Crazy, I know.  This coming from the girl who 3 months ago couldn't run a mile and didn't know what pro-nating was (however you spell that, you crazy runners).  This coming from the girl who had a legitimate panic attack in the middle of the Indian River trying to swim to the end of the Eau Gallie Library dock.  This coming from the girl who had (until a few months back) never even known that those "skinny tire bikes" were one of the greatest inventions of all time.

And, so I'm training during the week of the race--finding myself tired and wondering "why in the world am I doing this?"  I'm in the pool at the gym by myself, but the good part was I was swimming laps like a champ.  Aside from my bathing suit, I had on my nose clip that goes around my head (to solve part of the problem for said panic attack in the river),  my larger-than-most goggles so I could see really well, and my snazzy swim cap (that I managed to get on like a pro that day, thank you).  I look like a real novice, but that's because I AM, so I was feeling pretty good about the situation.  Then, in comes a really proficient swimmer (who happens to be a really handsome young man).  And out of all the OPEN LANES, he gets into the lane next to mine.  Of course.  Immediately my mind goes to: "OH no!  He's going to think I'm such a noob, especially with my non-sexy nose clip.  And he's probably thinking 'what is she even doing in this pool?'" and a whole host of other self-depriciating thoughts.  However, somewhere in the mid-n00b-bash, (also, while I decide that I'm going to secretly race him--you know you've done this at the gym.  Secretly race other people...)  I started to think: "Wait a minute!  What am I doing?  Why am I entertaining these thoughts for even a second!  Who cares what he thinks?"

And these verses immediately hit me: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death."--Romans 8:1-2

If I am measuring myself by the law of the land, or even the Law of the Lord, I will never--in my own abilities--be able to be good enough.  I will never measure up.  However, those verses immediately gave me hope.   I didn't need to add condemnation to myself when there was no condemnation to be had.  I didn't need to worry about what that guy thought, or what I thought, or even what God thought about me in that moment.  I needed to know that this old way of life that I had lived in for so long was being internally and externally changed.  I needed to remember that this triathlon--a symbol of something basically impossible for me to imagine finishing only a few months ago--was now within my grasp of completion.  I was beginning to understand that the Spirit God gave me is not a timid spirit, but one that has set me free and is full of power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:8).  I am a new creation, as the verse at the top said.  You can even see the difference:

In one photo--a girl who was awesome, and had a lot of unrealized awesomeness.  And the next--a girl who is still awesome, with a zest for continuing to be secretly awesome and seeing others be awesome too.  

When do I stop believing Jesus still means what He said?  Probably at various increments of the day, depending on the day.  However, every day I need to be keenly reminded of how God is still at work in my life and the lives of the people around me.  I'm a forgetful person (even in my young age), but I want to put a stake in the ground on this promise that Love set me free, and there's much more Life (with an adventurous "capital L") in store.  

So, I leave you with this question:

Who's coming with me for the next race? :)