I am not gonna lie. I absolutely love how God orchestrates and carries out His plan in order to make connections with people. In fact, this is exactly how today’s guest blogger, Charity, and I became such great pals. Charity is a sincere, determined and passionate lover of Christ. We both go to Christ Community Church and *somehow* (ahem, Jesus) kept ending up in the same groups, classes, and events over the last year and a half or so. Now, we are friends “in real life…” and I couldn’t be more excited to share this inspirational story about how Jesus is showing up in Charity’s life daily through her love of fitness, faith and encouraging others. 

So strap on your running shoes and let’s get to stepping!
SGK 

PS: Please note that I am super, duper, incredibly jealous that I can’t take this class alongside Charity and the others… But something about being ridic preggo/birthing a brand new baby/doctors order to chill out/blahblahblah keeps me from participating at the present moment… SIGH. 😉 

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I love Jesus. I love to run. I do not, however, love the rain. But somehow– those three things came together for our first Run for God class at CCC…

Run for God is a 10-12 week training plan aimed at running a 5k while maintaining a Christian focus. The primary goal is to prepare people to be better witnesses for Christ – Physically, Mentally, and Spiritually.

When I first thought about what stories I would share about this class, I wanted to share some of the reasons individuals chose to come to the class… or stories about connections made and friendships started… or individual responses to the run… All those sweet things happened and more. God is already doing an awesome work through this class, but today – we’re praising God in the Rain!

Running in the rain was not anywhere on the top 10 list of things I had planned for the first class…in fact it was probably on the bottom of my list… but God has bigger plans.

Rain – It’s inconvenient. We avoid it. We have umbrellas and rain gear to keep it off of us. We plan gatherings with back up plans to avoid the rain. People in Georgia cannot drive in it. Most people don’t get excited about the rain. Guess what – Rain is out of our control.

But without rain, there is no growth. Rain is one of the primary sources of generating life!  What if the rain was just God cleansing us for this journey.

So call us crazy, but 65 brothers and sisters in Christ decided to run in the rain – all for the glory of God!

Let’s face it. A little rain never hurt anyone. In fact, it’s exhilarating. Remember back to your childhood when you would intentionally jump in mud puddles and play in the rain. It was fun! What are we so afraid of? People thinking we’re crazy? Getting wet? Or “getting sick?”

Life isn’t about waiting for the storms to pass; it’s about learning to dance (or in this case run) in the rain!

Even though everyone was wet, the smiles were abounding by the time our class concluded. Spirits were high! Encouraging words filled the area. As we arrived back from our run, even the other life school classes noticed how excited everyone was from running…in the rain.

It doesn’t matter what life circumstance(s) you are facing today, Praise God in it! Maybe the storm is just God cleansing you for something bigger… better… and FULL of HIM.

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Charity is a child of God. Simple as that. She love’s God and is thankful to have such an awesome church family, and thankful daily for the work God is doing in my life. Everyday. She is married to an incredible man, Adam-  there are so many great things to say about him that she’ll save that for another time, date, and location. But just know he is awesome. Finally, she has two cute, furry, cuddly cavalier King Charles spaniels, Zoe and Charlie. You can connect with Charity via her Running 2 His Arms Blog.