Endurance

 

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

—Hebrews 12:1

“Life is not a sprint. It is a marathon.” You’ve heard that quotation. I would like to think that “Oftentimes, trials are not a sprint, but a marathon.” Some trials God gives us in our lives last a day or two. Others go on far longer than we could ever imagine and demand much more of us than we could have ever thought.

In fact, some troubles take far more strength and endurance than we would naturally have available. Don’t believe the idea that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle—by ourselves, alone. In fact, He often gives us more than we can handle just for the purposes He has of causing us to rely totally on Him to carry us beyond our own strength.

We can find comfort in the Sovereignty of God: His supreme, unlimited, wise authority over everything that happens to us gives us assurance that we are in His hands. Yet, does that mean we have no responsibility at all? Whereas some people think they have to manage everything in their lives, others think that submitting to, and waiting on, God alone, getting out of His way, allows Him to perform His will in us and through us.

I love the way that Carolyn Curtis Jones writes about this subject:¹

[The writer of the Hebrews] put both ideas side by side without diluting either of them when he charged his readers to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” God marks out our race, and we are commanded to run. If we follow logic, sovereignty doesn’t remove human responsibility. It actually increases it. Human responsibility depends on an ordered world in which God is sovereign. You can’t be responsible in a world of chaos, chance and blind fate. Sovereignty frees us to act because we know God has a plan. We are part of that plan, for we are the agents through whom he accomplished his purposes… God calls us to full-throttled, active, and creative living.

Sometimes, God allows us to feel exhausted, to press us beyond our limits. As anyone who has taken athletic training, or even physical therapy, knows—if you have invested yourself fully in this experience—you will feel exhausted and pressed beyond your limits. But, the payoff comes from that pressing forward in strengthening your own self.

God wants to make us into marathon runners and warriors for His glory. In the end, we will not celebrate our great skill, but our great God. Only by our cooperation with His power and His loving wisdom, will the race be run. All glory to Him!

______________________

1 James, Carolyn Curtis. When Life and Beliefs Collide. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2001. (Amazon Kindle) Pp. 128-129.

 

 

Refresh

 

“You gave abundant showers, O God; you refreshed your weary inheritance.”

—Psalm 68:9

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

—Acts 3:19

Without water, we would all die. We rely on God to supply the rain in order for us to live. I am amazed at how quickly my drooping indoor plants revive once I pour a little refreshing water on them.

We humans can live in a dehydrated condition for a while. But, without natural water and without God-given spiritual water, we cannot live with the vigor, joy, and beauty that God intended when He made us.

A deficiency in the electrolytes that keep our bodies’ electrical systems in balance shows up in lethargy, fatigue, heart rhythm problems, dry skin, and a host of other dire consequences that appear when we have not had enough water. Our bodies only become refreshed with a return to proper hydration.

Let me ask each of us this question: How are our “spiritual electrolytes”? Those of our churches? Can we detect a loss of spiritual hydration there? Sometimes, we hardly know when our spiritual posture sags from lack of the refreshment that God wants to provide for us.

In fact, Jesus addressed this problem with the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-45 and called Himself the “Living Water.” Once she drank of His life-giving spiritual water, she left her water jug, ran rejoicing, and called her neighbors to come at once to meet with Jesus.

In John 7:1-24, we read of Jesus preaching to the crowds at the Feast of Tabernacles, and calling them to come to Him for living water. Like those in that long-ago crowd who responded to Jesus, once we learn to rely on this “Water of Life,” we will need the refreshing and the life-giving health it gives in order to serve Him well.

When we fall into patterns of mundane worship, when we droop in our service to God, when our hearts do not beat with vigor for Christ, and when our tired service yields no fruit for others, we know that we need to stop and ask God for a refreshment of the “Living Water” that only He can give us through His precious Son. Fortunately, we only need to ask Him and He will surely supply us with this “Living Water.”

Let us pray that we will clearly see our weariness and, in response, ask God for “rain in the springtime” before we dry up and blow away. Let us ask God for showers of refreshing and a renewal of life, so that we can serve Him effectively.

I particularly like the way this hymn describes such a prayer:¹

Refresh Thy people on their toilsome way;
Lead us from night to never-ending day;
Fill all our lives with love and grace divine;
And glory, laud, and praise be ever Thine. Amen.

______________________

1 Roberts, Daniel C. God of Our Fathers. Public Domain.

 

 

The Sting

 

“Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

—1 Corinthians 15:55-56

Whether you have an allergy to bee stings or not, the experience of being stung causes a pain that you will not easily forget. Two aspects of a bee sting cause the pain. First, the stinger itself, like a tiny sword, contains a sharp barbed point that stays in the skin until you remove it. Secondly, the venom causes a chemical reaction within one’s body producing pain and swelling.

St. Paul used the “sting” to illustrate the experience of sin and death. He paired these two poisons in Romans 6:23, when he wrote:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can easily see how death carries a “sting.” No one can dispute that this ending point comes to us as the ultimate battle that we face. As believers in the Lord Jesus, however, we are assured of the absence of the “sting” of this enemy.

If you have experienced the death of a loved one who lived as a follower of and believer in Christ, you know that the terror, no matter how terrible the death, has been softened as a result of the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross. Jesus dealt with the victory of death when He died on the cross and rose again from the dead.

We, as humans, experience many other kinds of “stinging” events in our lives. We know the pain of scary medical diagnoses, the loss of jobs, difficult financial straits, legal battles, and numerous other kinds of disappointments.

Sometimes, we have faith to believe all that God has told us in His word concerning our experience of death. But, in the midst of our particular trials, we fail to realize that He has also removed the “stinger” from these lesser struggles.

Reason with me that the God who has power over death, also has power over all other events in our lives. In response, let us resolve today, to face all of life and death by trusting our God to remove the venom from each powerful heartbreak. We must remember that He has removed the sting!

 

 

King Me

 

“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.”

—Isaiah 42:8

Most of us have played the game of Checkers at one time or another and know that when our “man” reaches the first row of the other player’s side, we gleefully shout, “King Me!” As a result, we get an extra “man” on top and can move in any direction we want to move.

Don’t all of us want to be “King” of our lives in that way, so that we can move wherever we desire? According to Paul David Tripp:¹

We all demand to be in the center of our world. We all tend to be too focused on what we want, on what we think we need, and on our feelings. We all want our own way, and we want people to stay out of our way. We all want to be sovereign [king] over our lives and to write our own rules… When we are angry, it’s seldom because the people around us have broken God’s law, most often we are angry because people have broken the law of our happiness.

Yet, over and over again in Scripture, Jesus reminded us that He is King and wants us to honor Him as King. Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 6:15-16, that He is:

God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

Again and again, Jesus taught about His Kingdom: how to become great in that Kingdom, how to enter the Kingdom, what the Kingdom is like, and to whom the Kingdom belongs. Those who belong to His kingdom have made, and continue to make, Him the Sovereign over their lives.

Our sinful nature compels us to want to be king of our own lives. The culture around us lives with that guiding principal. This poem perfectly demonstrates that philosophy.²

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

See the contrast in this passage from Philippians 2:8-11 written about our King of kings:

He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Though it requires of us humility and suffering, this remains the Kingdom to which we belong and the King to whom we bow!

______________________

1 Tripp, Paul David. Come, Let Us Adore Him. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Publishing Company, 2017. p. 83.

2 Henley, William Ernest, Invictus. Chicago, Illinois: Poetry Foundation Publishing Company, 2019.