Faith Is The Key That Unlocks The Door To Life

FINISH THE RACE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORM

If you are standing in the middle of something hard right now, this one is for you.

Not the hard you planned for. The kind that showed up without warning and is still here. And if your faith feels far too small to be of any use to you in it, stay with me, because Jesus had something very specific to say about that.

Every runner knows what happens with 600 meters to go. Your form starts coming apart, your breathing gets ragged, and everything in you is hunting for a reason to shut it down. That moment is coming in your life too, and the next time it will not be on a cross country course.

Trust Him In The Boat

When the boat was swamping and the disciples were certain they were finished, Jesus asked them two questions: "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" (Mark 4:40).

Notice what He did not say. He did not tell them the storm was small. He did not tell them the waves were imaginary. He asked where their trust had gone while the water was still coming over the side.

Scripture defines faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Read that as an athlete. Faith is not a feeling you wait around to receive. It is a decision you make before the evidence arrives. It is the same decision you make at five in the morning when the alarm goes off, the rain is coming down sideways, and nothing in your body wants to run. You do not feel like a runner in that moment. You go anyway, and the running makes you one.

Faith works the same way. Lean on Him first. The feeling catches up later, and sometimes much later.

When Your Faith Feels Too Small

Here is where most people quit on themselves. They look at what is left in the tank, decide it is not enough, and stop asking.

Jesus anticipated that. He told His disciples that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed, they could tell a mountain to move, and it would move, and nothing would be impossible for them (Matthew 17:20). A mustard seed is about a millimeter across. You could lose one in the palm of your hand.

Understand what He is actually saying. He is not setting a minimum you have to reach. He is telling you the minimum is almost nothing, because the power was never coming from the size of your faith. It comes from the One you place that faith in. A small faith in a great God moves mountains. A great confidence in yourself moves nothing you could not already move.

One of my favorite prayers in all of Scripture comes from a father whose son was suffering and who had nearly run out of hope. He said to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).

That is an honest man. He is not pretending and he is not performing. He brings Jesus the little he has and asks Him to supply the rest, and Jesus does not scold him for it. He heals the boy.

If that is all you have got today, it is enough to start with. Bring Him the mustard seed. Say the words out loud. Then take the next step of your day, which is what an athlete does when the workout looks impossible. You do not run the whole thing at once. You run the interval in front of you.

And when you are worn out from carrying it, hear the invitation He extends to every exhausted person: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden" (Matthew 11:28). Come as you are. Come tired. Just come.

The Fire Is Doing Something

Saint Peter wrote to Christians who were suffering and told them their trials had a purpose, so that the tested genuineness of their faith, "more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire," would be found to God's praise and glory (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Sit with that comparison. Gold is what the world spends its life chasing, and Peter says your tested faith is worth more. Not your comfortable faith. Your tested faith. The fire is what proves the difference between the two.

Fire does not destroy gold. Fire removes what was never gold to begin with.

Saint Paul, who knew a great deal about hardship, wrote that "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character," and that character produces hope (Romans 5:3-4). Read it the way a coach reads it. That is a training progression. Stress, adaptation, strength. God is not wasting your hard season. He is building something in you that an easy season could never build.

Trust that the pain will bring good, even if you cannot see the good right now. Paul promised exactly that, telling us that "in everything God works for good with those who love him" (Romans 8:28).

Not everything works out the way we want. Hard things happen, and no amount of faith exempts you from that. You cannot always choose the conditions of the race. Rain, wind, a bad lane, a fall at the first turn. You can always choose what you do next, and that choice is the whole thing.

And when your own strength runs out, and it will, you are not finished. Paul begged God three times to take his suffering away, and the answer he received was this: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9), for power is made perfect in weakness. The last mile is not run on your strength. It never was.

The Verse At The Bottom Of Every Letter I Write

I sign everything with Philippians 4:13, and I want to tell you why, because that verse gets quoted constantly and understood rarely.

Most people treat it as a promise that they will get the thing they are after. The trophy. The scholarship. The outcome. Read the sentence just before it and you will find Paul talking about something else entirely. He says he has learned how to be brought low and how to abound, that in any and all circumstances he has faced both plenty and hunger, both abundance and want. Then comes the famous line: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me."

He wrote that in prison.

The all things is not everything you want. The all things is everything He allows, including the seasons of want. That is a far better promise than the one people think they are getting, because it holds up when the outcome does not go your way. There is no circumstance you can be handed that He cannot carry you through.

So when you see that verse under my name, understand what I am actually wishing for you. Not an easy road. Strength for the road you were given.

Run Your Race

I have spent forty years helping people reach their God-given potential through running, and the reason I have never gotten tired of it is this: I see gifts in people they do not yet see in themselves.

I see one in you.

Near the end of his life Paul wrote, "I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). He did not write that he was never knocked down, never abandoned, never afraid. He wrote that he finished. That is what I want for all of us. Finishing well.

He does not promise to remove the storm. He promises to be in the boat. "Fear not, for I am with you" (Isaiah 41:10).

Bring Him your mustard seed. Keep your form. Keep your faith. Finish strong.

Blessings, Coach Weber Philippians 4:13

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version, CE.