Before 1954, the consensus opinion was that no human would ever run a mile in under four minutes. Even studies had been done to show that if a person ran a mile in under four minutes they would have a heart attack. On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3 minutes 59 seconds.
What many don’t know is that Roger Bannister was a man of faith. Upon his death last year, his Anglican priest daughter wrote, “All his life, my father attended church. He said it brought him peace, especially in his hectic years as a junior doctor and young father…Sunday lunch was usually a vibrant discussion on the strength and weaknesses of the message delivered from the pulpit,” Ms Bannister-Parker recalled.
The power of two—a wholehearted person teamed up with God.
Rosa Parks started a movement. She has been called, “the first lady of civil rights,” and “the mother of the freedom movement.” On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James Blake’s order to relinquish her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white’s only section was filled.
In her book, entitled “Quiet Strength,” Parks says her belief in God developed early in life. “Every day, before supper and before we went to services on Sundays,” Parks said, “my grandmother would read the Bible to me and my grandfather would pray. We even had devotions before going to pick cotton in the fields. Prayer and the Bible,” she recalls, “became a part of my everyday thoughts and beliefs. I learned to put my trust in God and to seek Him as my strength.”
Has God put a great dream in your heart? Does it seem impossible, a mountain too high? Remember it was Jesus who said, “Listen to the truth I speak to you: If someone says to this mountain with great faith and having no doubt, ‘Mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the midst of the sea,’ and believes that what he says will happen, it will be done.” (Mark 11:23, TPT).
Dream big dreams with God. The poet, Robert Browning once said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”
Dreaming and believing,
Steve
Steve Holt M.A., D.D.
My newest book, Worshipper Warrior, can be found at www.steveholtonline.org
and www.amazon.com
