Meditation Mondays – Persevere

I’ve spent a lot of time going through the motions of doing the right things (like reading my Bible every day) and going to the right places (like church three times a week). These weren’t lost years of my life, for I learned important things and met wonderful people, nor do I plan to stop these vital practices, but there was something big missing. The sad part is, I didn’t truly realize it.

Slowly, I’ve come to understand a bit more what it means to be living with an incredible amount of power thanks to the Holy Spirit. As soon as I began to not only understand that concept, but believe it is true, I’ve had an explosion of opportunities to comprehend the Bible more when I’m reading it on my own as well as when I’m at church learning. The key was to live out what I said I believed, and prove it with my faith.

One of the areas I’ve been challenged in since I started to really make it a point to live by faith was perseverance. I don’t have to inform you that persevering to live by faith in God is not easy! In fact, without God’s power in your life, it’s impossible to do it throughout the entire course of your life. There will be that point when all of us will hit a brick wall and think we just can’t go on anymore.

We all have those brick walls of varying heights and thicknesses throughout our lives to test our perseverance. The question is what we will do when the brick walls loom over us in their taunting ways.

Sometimes I sit at the bottom of mine for a while. I know how much work it’s going to take to scale that massive thing and I just don’t want to. Then I become miserable and think I should at least try…until I look up and see that the wall seems to have grown another 50 feet or so. Even when I put my shaky fingers and clumsy feet in position on the mortar, I wonder if I can actually do this. Thankfully God gave us verses like Hebrews 10:39 to remind us what we’re really made of.

“But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”

I’m not downplaying the size of the wall, nor the sticky or slippery circumstances that may be making the wall more hazardous, but I know this. No matter how beat up we may become in the process of climbing over the walls that stand between us and peace, we will come out more beautifully refined on the other side. It will probably be excruciating as we use muscles we’ve never before known existed, but that pain will pale in comparison to the devastating life of mediocrity we are doomed to if we stay camped out on the side of the wall we know so well.

So if you have the faith in God, are you claiming the truth? You’re not of the breed who shrinks back, you have faith instead. If that faith is there, that means the power to climb brick by treacherous brick is just waiting to be used. Will you climb?