Maxwell Strachan, with The Huffington Post , reports:
\n Fouad Baka of Algeria finished a 1500-meter race in just 3 minutes and 49.59 seconds at the Maracan\u00e3 Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s fast, so fast that if Baka had finished with that time at that exact stadium in August, he would have beat out Matthew Centrowitz Jr. of the U.S. for the Olympic gold medal. Centrowitz Jr. finished the final in 3 minutes and 50 seconds.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Baka, he wasn\u2019t racing in the Olympics. He was racing in the Paralympics, where not one or two runners finished ahead of him, but three. [1]
\n What if instead of being handicapped by a handicap, you became better, faster, stronger? Would it change the way you looked at your handicap? That\u2019s what happened to the Apostle Paul after he was afflicted with what he called, a \u201cthorn in the flesh.\u201d After repeatedly praying for deliverance, Paul was told, \u201cMy grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once Paul realized that God intended his disadvantage to work out to his spiritual advantage, he proclaimed, \u201cTherefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ\u2019s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ\u2019s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).<\/p>\n
Paul became an enthusiastic member of God\u2019s paralympic team. How about you? Are you choosing to embrace the disadvantages in your life, seeing them as opportunities to allow the power of Christ to flow through you?<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
1. \u201cFour Paralympians Just Ran The 1500m Faster Than Anyone At The Rio Olympics Final,\u201d Maxwell Strachan, Senior Editor, The Huffington Post , September 12, 2016.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #14184]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maxwell Strachan, with The Huffington Post , reports: Fouad Baka of Algeria finished a 1500-meter race in just 3 minutes and 49.59 seconds at the Maracan\u00e3 Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. That\u2019s fast, so fast that if Baka had finished with that time at that exact stadium in August, he would have beat out Matthew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1045,4117,1696,2940,1268],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}