Expecting Resistance

Standing at the starting line of a marathon, a million things go through your mind. You begin to run the course through your mind. You mentally go through the flat parts, up and down the hills. You begin to picture the water stations, the crowds, where the medical tents are stationed. You visualize that monster of a hill at mile 17. You picture the lonely stretch of roads that eventually lead you to the finish line. Decorated with balloons, cold water being sprayed everywhere, your friends cheering you on… oh, and donʼt forget the medal.

This is, after all, why youʼve been training.

But every runner out there knows that the course is only 25% of the fight, and the other 75% of the fight, is you.

Itʼs mental.

Itʼs knowing your body, knowing your limit. Knowing what it takes to stop you. Knowing how to motivate yourself. You know from your training when you need to drink or eat. You know from practice that you cramp up at mile 10, and at mile 23 your feet feel as though youʼre running barefoot. You know where youʼll need encouragement, where youʼll want a friend to run along side you. You know that you canʼt stop before you finish.

You have to keep moving. You have to keep running. You canʼt stop.

You know all of this because youʼve been training, no one runs a marathon well without training.

Youʼve come to expect difficulty.

Youʼre expecting resistance.

But you run it anyway.

In running, careers, marriages, weʼve come to expect difficulties. In some cases we prepare for them and some even look forward to the challenges. However when it
comes to our faith, are we expecting it to be easy? Are we expecting to cruise through our lives with no resistance, no trials, only blessing after blessing? Easy road after easy road.

When you look at Nehemiah you learn how he expected resistance and how he prepared for it to come. You observe that he went to work with a sword and the trowel. Knowing the enemy would come at any time he had his builders ready to fight off the invaders at a moments notice. But until the attack came they would work. Because any great movement of God is never without itʼs trials.

But our trials canʼt stop us from moving forward. Like the marathon, like our careers, our marriages and like the rebuilding of the wall, or like our faith, we have to keep moving.

We canʼt stop. If we stop, so does our cause. Nehemiah understood this and took the necessary steps to prepare.

Paul understood this in Philippians 3 where he tells his readers that: He presses…

…on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of
it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward
what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God
has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (13-14).

Paul has one thing in mind and nothing in his past (persecuting Christians), his present (being imprisoned), or his future (certain death), was going to stop him.

So in our faith when trouble comes our way, are we going to give up or will we rally on to the goal that has been set in front of us?

Will we continue pushing towards our calling?

Will we keep building the walls like Nehemiah did against every kind of pressure to stop
building?

Or will we keep pushing towards the finish line, aware of the trials that are coming towards us? Aware of the obstacles that lie ahead, knowing that we arenʼt alone, and that God wonʼt give up either.

… being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to
completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6).

If God has called you to something we can trust that he will not abandon us. He is going to see it through. You just have to keep going.

Remember your training.

And push forward.

 

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~ by Brad on August 31, 2011.