...You
want us to persevere.
Following
is a note that our choir director, Tania DeVito Roberts, sent out to the
members of our ladies ensemble (of which I am a part). I’ve asked her
permission to post her message here on my blog. So here it is. After reading it
you will understand why I felt this was a message that needed to go beyond our
little group.
“Why do we think that when God tells
us to do something, if it doesn’t fall into place neatly, we must have heard
wrong? We seem to think that we are excused for giving up when we meet
obstacles because if it is God’s will, He will “open the door”. We even tell
Him we’ll just follow the path of least resistance, and that’s how we’ll
recognize the way He has laid out for us.
But…Jesus is our perfect example and
that is not how things went for Him. When He was faced with the important task
of choosing the 12 men who would spend 3 ½ years with Him and to whom He would
then entrust with building His Church after He left, He did not look up to
heaven and say “OK, Father, I am open to whatever You decide. You bring me the
guys You want me to choose and I will accept whomever You bring to me. I’ll
take the first 12 that come along, and I’m trusting that You will send them my
way.” He didn’t do that. He spent 40 days starving and praying in the desert,
culminating in face-to-face confrontation with the devil. That wasn’t easy.
Gethsemane wasn’t easy. The day of His crucifixion wasn’t easy. But it was
exactly what God wanted Him to do.
Why do we think things should be
different for us? Jesus knew God’s heart and He knew God’s will, and He set His
face like a flint and walked forward until the whole mission was complete. He
met with many obstacles and was misunderstood by just about everyone, but He
persevered because He knew God’s word and He believed it.
It wasn’t easy for Noah to keep
building a massive boat in the desert for 100 years, and he also was
misunderstood by everyone around him. Why did he keep going? Because he had
heard from the Lord, and he knew it, not because all the circumstances just
seemed to work out that way, and certainly not because it made sense.
Samuel did not choose David based on
his looks, age, size or reputation. In fact, he didn’t even get a look at David
when he saw all of Jesse’s sons. David wasn’t even there. Samuel knew God’s
voice, and he knew when God said, “This is the one.”
We know God’s voice because we are
His children. He speaks to us all the time. Even when we’re only
half-listening, He speaks extra loudly lest we should have an excuse. We hear
Him, but then we become nervous. We don’t want fulfilling the mission He’s
assigned to us to be hard or painful, and we certainly don’t want it to take
too long! But that is the opposite of what we consistently see in scripture.
Those who had been given important tasks faced severe opposition. They had to
be determined to accomplish what they set out to do, or it never would have
come to pass.
God doesn’t want us to give up every
time we come to a road block and say, “I guess it just wasn’t God’s will.” He
has important stuff for us to do, and He can’t afford for us to be wimps. He
needs us to be mighty warriors, and soldiers don’t get trained by having
everything handed to them on a silver platter. We are His army in training, and
we’re going to have to get dirty and bruised and tired and knocked down in
order to get toughened up for the crucial battles.
God proves to us over and over
through the difficulties we face that He is faithful and able to overcome every
one of them. The sooner we give up trying to make obedience easier on
ourselves, the sooner we are on our way to fulfilling every great plan He has
for our lives. Time is getting short, so we need to make the most efficient use
of it possible, and backing off when we know God has spoken, is not the way to
accomplish that.”
So
friends, now you know why I wanted to share this message with you.
Let's be quick to obey and then push through to the victory. When we are anchored in His love and who we are in
Him, coupled with the power of the Holy Spirit, imagine what can be
accomplished!! I want to be like that, one who obeys and who perseveres. God
please help me!
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