Here I gooooooo..........

Tomorrow, Monday, May 25, 2009, Memorial Day, is it! Alex, Lyn, and me, will be walking the 24th L. A. Marathon. This will be Lyn's 10th, my first. This will be Lyn's first with walking it in over 6 hours, because she and her daughter are walking my pace, and stepping over the finish line at the same time I do... no matter how long it takes me to move my body from the start to the finish. Now, that is friendship!

Already, the Lord has answered many prayers. I asked Him, "Can't you just flatten out the course (because Lyn told me about some hills)?" And then, the course was changed. Yahoo. The only bummer about that change is that we got hotel rooms at the original starting line, and now we are 6 miles from the starting line.

Another prayer was the weather. "You control the weather. Can it be please be cool, a bit overcast, and slightly breezy?" According to the weather forecasters (not that they know anything much) it is to be just that. Hoooray! We'll see this answer tomorrow. :)

We have a God who hears!!! And answers.

Psa 66:19

But certainly God has heard; He has given heed to the voice of my prayer.

Psa 116:2

Because He has inclined His ear to me, Therefore I shall call {upon Him} as long as I live.

One other very fun thing is that a girlfriend I rarely get to talk to anymore sent me a surprise email a couple of days ago. She had been reading one of our favorite devotionals, Streams in the Desert, and when she got to one paragraph I popped into her mind! Yay! So, she sent this to me:

"He shall perform the cause which I have in hand" Does not that make it very real to us today? Just the very thing that "I have at hand" my own particular bit of work today, this cause I cannot manage, this thing I undertook in miscalculation of my own powers- this is what I may ask Him to do "for me" and rest assured that He will perform it. "The wise and thier works are in Gods Hands"

And you know what I say to that? It's been my motto during training - I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, I can..... each and every step I have taken I have uttered that verse as a plea to keep moving and not quit! And, oh, boy, have I wanted to quit over and over and over again! But, didn't. God answered that prayer, too. :)

But that's not all. The quote from that devotional was followed by one last paragraph on the page, one that I long ago drew a huge ink heart around. It is a quote from Spurgeon that I have always clung to: "Whatever He takes in hand He will accomplish; hence past mercies are guarantees for the future and admirable reasons for continuing to cry unto Him."

See, eight years ago I had to have a surgery I DID NOT WANT. I begged God for mercies galore, very specific ones. He answered them all - AND MORE. I was blown away, and have told the story millions (ok, lots) of times. Well, I had been praying and reminding the Lord of those mercies and asking Him to be even more merciful to me for this marathon. When my friend sent that one paragraph, she didn't know that the Lord had tucked in His own message of confirmation to me through that last paragraph! Such is our God!!! Wonderful is His name! Amen!

Anyway, alllllll these months of torturous training (and lots of complaining from these lips that will now praise), and tomorrow will be the pay off.

Can't wait to cross that finish line!!!!!! (Pray for us!!) All things are possible with God!