This week, I’m at the Avila Retreat Center in Durham, North Carolina, attending the first of three, one week intensives for Duke’s Foundations of Christian Leadership program.  This afternoon, we were provided with a much needed opportunity for reflection, often scarce in our ministry settings.  After answering a series of questions during a guided journaling exercise, we were asked to get up from our seats and spread out throughout the room.  We were asked to move forward in our ministries, taking three physical steps in faith and opening a door to the possibilities on the other side.

When I returned to my seat, I was encouraged by the words, “Don’t stop walking” that resonated within me afterwards.  My heart quickly turned to The Daily Race, the fact that I don’t write daily and the sad reason why.  It is because I don’t think that people will want to hear from me everyday and the fact that the race has become more of a weekly task than a daily spiritual discipline.  But, then a great truth struck me down deep in my soul and it just kept enlarging it’s self within me.

“You don’t always have to run.  You can walk.  You can stand in place.  Just don’t get off the track.  Don’t take off the uniform.  Don’t take off the you that I have formed.  It’s a long road but you don’t have to walk the distance in a day.  Just walk with Me.”  Just last night, I had been singing the words of a song that include those very words: “I want Jesus to walk with me.”

But that wasn’t all.  I don’t write everyday because of what I want to say, what I know I must say.  The Great Truth continued, “Say it. Talk about it.  It is what you want to say and it is all you have to say.  It is your message.  You must listen to you.”

So, that’s it.  It is not a matter of who will hear the message of The Daily Race but whether or not I will listen everyday and talk to myself.  I encourage you to talk to yourself, to listen deeply and truly for the name that is calling you and to go to the place that it is calling you to.  You have a race to run too.