perseverance
Hello and welcome back to the Life Spoken Inspired show; where the price is low and the food tastes great. With none other than your most friendly host: Derek… Ok… sorry for that, I was just bored =). So yup, been a while since I’ve been writing consistently, but I’m hoping that through this, each post will have more of me within it. Well, here goes.
Perseverance. You say it, your pastor says it, your friends, your family and the bible all say it. What is it to persevere? How many times do I fail to persevere? How can I persevere better? These are some questions that we continually ask ourselves consciously and unconsciously. It seems that all I’ve done since I became a Christian was make choices. Choosing between good and bad, the choice of whether to follow the moral conduct I’m supposed to, the choice to go to that party if I know I’ll end up a mess, the choice of turning my head to watch that girl with the nice figure walking by, the choice to go back to everything I left behind when I became a Christian. Sometimes we feel restrained by Christianity with all the choices we face, but in reality, whether we were Christians or not we are still constantly plagued with choices, only that with Christianity it seems so much more of a burden because we’re living a standard that is at odds with that of society.
I think that one of the things people around me are suffering most at is the choice between whether to persevere as a Christian altogether. Hopefully when you became a Christian (those who weren’t born into it) you weren’t persuaded by people saying that it is an easier life. Big big big lie. On a scale of one to ten on how much more difficult a Christian life is over a secular one, I think it hits around 17. I’ll never deny though that living a life of a Christian is great; it makes me smile and brings me joy daily, but there are those trials and tribulations we face daily, which is why it is so necessary to persevere. I’m deeply saddened by those who were close to me who give up on God. There’s not much I can say about it without sounding overly offensive on my part, so I’ll avoid it and just leave it there by saying that it hurts deep. The only thing I can say to those who are having troubles persevering with their faith is: keep at it, in all honesty. “Don’t forget your roots, and what God meant to you at some point in time, because however real he was to you back then, he’s just as real today, tomorrow and forever.”
A big issue that a lot of people like using to persecute someone is that they have no right to talk about a certain subject. I.e. saying that someone is too young to preach, or too unknowledgeable to share his wisdom. People will say this because they feel that it’s not right for someone to say something they don’t have much experience on. Although I only half agree with a couple things I’ve said in this paragraph, just to support this writing I’ll relate it to my life now. Basically, I’ve taken up swimming again. It’s been a solid 3 years since I’ve done any sort of swimming outside of floating in beach waters. All I can say is that it is a very very sad sight to see me going at it under the knowledge that I used to be an OFSAA swimmer. How sad it is indeed. I basically hit a break between my sets of midterms and decided to go swimming as much as I can, to bring an old past-time back into my life and also to burn off that turkey fat that still pesters me from Christmas. So to relate my experiences to swimming, here goes.
Sore, exhausted, itchy, and beat-down. That’s how I feel right now. It’s only been twice that I’ve been on my swimming routine and it is beyond painful. Yes, it would be so easy to just call it quits and translate my pool time into sitting in my chair time, but of what benefit would that be. Yes, swimming is THE pain in my life right now, but it’s also doing so much for me. Every lap I do, I burn that much fat, every lap I build that much muscle, every lap I get that much better at refining a smoother stroke. I love swimming because I know how beneficial it is for me. Yes, maybe right now it’s painful and makes me somewhat immobile for the day, but I know that the more I do it, the less that it’ll hurt, the more I’ll enjoy it and the more of a habit it’ll be.
So why persevere? Simple. Burn fat, build muscle, refine yourself. Through persevering we achieve these three things. We burn fat, our dead weight. This is the stuff that appears out of no where when you don’t exercise enough. Exercise what you ask? Exercise your body, your spiritual health, your mental capabilities. Fat is what will increasingly keep us from doing something the more we avoid that ‘something’. The less you exercise, the fatter you get. And yup, it’s so depressing, but I got fat. Another reason why I need swimming. Next on the list, build muscle. Another lil treat swimming can provide is the muscle. I’ll be building myself a stronger, healthier body. This applies to our spiritual lives as well. The more we practice a certain act, the stronger our muscle gets, making other things easier, and future practice of this act easier as well. How do some people “make it look so easy”? It’s because they got the muscle. The muscle it takes to do whatever it is. They’ve got the practice and experience under their belt. The last thing, it refines ourselves. Sadly, my strokes look like that of a child learning to swim, once again knowing that I swam ofsaa and I was a certified instructor. I know that the more I continue to swim, the better my strokes will look. Not only look, but the better they’ll produce. The more I practice the action the more it comes to me without thinking, more “routine”. Similar to muscle building, refining yourself will make persevering easier. It’ll subconsciously motivate you and guide you.
In terms of running the race of Christianity. It usually isn’t till those on the sidelines see us running the race with all we have till they decide to take up running themselves. Thus it is important that we run this race with the utmost fervency, such we can attract others to run this race with us. A phrase I used to say, “Never give up, never give in. it's the shout of those who believe in Him. We are his sons and daughters. Let us live it loud.” Yes, let us live it loud, loud and strong forever, and ever amen. Persevere my brothers and sisters, the prize behind the finish line is that beyond what we could ever hope for. So to finalize, I ask you, what are you persevering through today? What are you lacking the perseverance for? And to put my own spin on a popular quote, “Got Fat?”
