Untoppable

6 Lessons from the book of Acts

It is that passion that calls us to run — unstoppable — the race that God Almighty has marked out for us.

With those thoughts swirling in my mind, I turned my focus back to the London 2012 games unfolding before me. Team USA was in lane 7.

The start was brilliant. It was clear by the end of the first exchange that both Jamaica and the USA teams had the speed to take the race. Coming out of the second exchange, the USA team was firmly in the lead.

And then the magic began.

The USA lead grew. And it grew more. The third exchange was perfect, and the crowd was going wild, sensing that something monumental was happening. The USA team was flying ahead. Eyes flew from the runners to the clock and back again. Barring some catastrophe, the question was no longer who would win. The question now was this: Would the USA beat the world record?

Like the crowd in the stadium, Nick and I and the girls were on our feet cheering them on.

And we watched it happen. Team USA sailed across the finish line in a world-record-smashing 40.82 seconds!

The stadium exploded in uproarious celebration. I was jumping so high my daughters thought I would hit the ceiling.

We’d not only seen four amazing individual runners set the world’s fastest speed for this race, but we’d also seen a unified team pass the baton with perfect precision and carry it first across the finish line faster than any team in history! And here is a shocking statistic: That unified team of four completed their 400 meters a full 6.78 seconds faster than the individual women’s world record for the 400-meter dash. That record is held by Marita Koch of East Germany at 47.60 seconds.4 Yes, four champion runners collaborating in the relay are faster than a lone champion runner. That’s the power of a team.

Perfect collaboration, each runner doing her personal best, running in sync, reaching, receiving, releasing, and pressing on with every ounce of strength she had to give. And when the anchor runner crossed the finish line, she carried not only the baton — she carried her entire team, her entire nation, to the gold.

I love the quote from Tianna Madison, the USA starter that day. “I knew that the Olympic record was coming down,” she said. “I just knew that if we had clean baton passes that we would challenge the world record. Smash it like we did? I had no idea. But I knew it was in us.”

Wow. Did you catch her phrase “if we had clean baton passes”? It shows exactly what we’ve been discussing. Everything hinges on what happens in the exchange zone. There we receive the baton, and there we release what is no longer ours to carry so the next runners can play their part. Miss, drop, or fumble the exchange, and the whole team suffers. But if we receive and release the right baton at the right time, victory at the finish line awaits.

Tianna was confident that if her team got the exchange right, they’d win the race and beat the world record. “I knew it was in us,” she declared.

I know it’s “in us” to do the same! We too can be unstoppable as we run our part in the divine relay.

Why? Because God is in us. God is for us. And that is what makes us unstoppable.

Christine Caine, Unstoppable: Running the Race You Were Born to Win (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014).