How's Your Endurance?

Where to begin, where to begin; God is good; and that’s always a good starting place. For some insane reason, I allowed my cousins and dad to talk me into waking up at 5:20 this morning to go to the YMCA for some good ole’, competitive basketball. I’m still trying to figure out why I allowed myself to be persuaded to such things. Ahh…family fun – of course and perhaps the breakfast afterwards pulled some weight in that decision. As we started to play our game of 3 on 2, the Eppling’s vs. the Grooms I began to realize something: I am 10 times more out of shape than I had originally thought. (Oh joy!) I was sucking air like it was going out of style and salivating as if there were a drought on the horizon. Eventually, the game ended, (thank goodness!), and we began the commencement of “chow down alley.” My cousin, who is also the youth pastor at FBC, was telling my dad and me how he was preaching at a Christian schools chapel this morning. For some reason, I suppose it’s due to the fact that my human nature tends to focus on SELF as often as my brain tells my body to breathe, as my dad was paying and off went my 3 wonderful family members, I thought to myself, “I hope he doesn’t find some life lesson in the fact that I was sucking air like I needed an oxygen tank and he use it as an example in his message this morning.” As soon as I began to think about it I chuckled to myself saying, “Em, what is there to even say about your lack of tenacity in the game that could be related to God and His relationship with His children?” Then it hit me: there is a BIG correlation that can be grabbed from my puny attempt on the court. I struggled out there this morning because I had been out of practice. I hadn’t run up and down a court in many, many, months – therefore I wasn’t at a place where my level of competition would be matched by the 9 year old, 13 year old…and we’ll leave the 2 old guys out of it.( Just kidding! I love my Dad and Chris!) It’s just like our relationship with God. When we are out of His word, how can we be prepared to face the battle of the day? We can’t. We MUST be wrapping ourselves in the voice of our Father and yearning to love Him more that we wish to love ourselves. It’s a conscious effort, guys. A friend said to me the other night, “Emily, you’ve always been better than me anyways.” Well, besides that being a lame excuse, (I love you, if you’re reading this), we cannot blame the fact that we are essentially satisfied at where we are on anything other than our focus on self Here are your 2 options: You either choose to sacrifice the rights to your life and live for God, denying yourself and your wants, desires, and trade your focus on self for a focus on Him, or you choose that you really do wish to live for yourself. Running is not the easiest thing to do – I hate it. But I make myself do it because I know that my body needs it. I know that I need to increase my endurance so I don’t half kill myself trying to play basketball. Just like Paul said in James 1:4, “And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

We must run so that we can build up endurance to run the race. We must stay in the Word that we may continue to be filled with the Holy Sprit and do what He wants us to do.