8.31-Get up. It's not over.

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 8.31-

 

 I took this picture of my dad who was just a couple of months from finishing his work on earth. He had this determined look on his face. Sometimes he would have this look as he was getting over getting beat at dominoes. He had a broken pair of roundhouse overalls and a broken place of the skin on his head. He was determined and didn't give up during the testing times of his life. Wayne Wishard was a fighter till the end.

The Christian life is more like a boxing match with fifteen rounds than it is like an MMA fight with five rounds. We are tested but we do not allow the tests to get us off our purposes.

I have a couple of friends who told me they knew what they believed their vocation was to be so they took tests to get into that field. If they failed, they intended to keep working until they passed them because that was what they felt they were cut out to do. This is the persistence that is needed.

Tests are not there to discourage the good workers, but to vet and clear out those who are not meant to be doing that work. So clear your mind and heart to get a holy vision of what you have been called to do and don't let the tests of life discourage you in any way.

One man who was writing about the Christian way of life a couple of thousand years ago said that he didn't shadow box through life, He said he was engaged in a real spiritual boxing match and that the real opponent was not anyone else, but a second class version of himself. The match was against the tempter who wanted him to quit before he finished in the ultimate boxing match of life.

We get into a hard round and maybe lose that round. We go to our corner and have the counsel from our earthly coaches as well as time with our heavenly coach, our Father in heaven. Then we get back out there and go again. As the great naval captain, John Paul Jones said after his ship had been hit once, "We have not yet begun to fight."

 

2 Corinthians 4.

7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; 8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 



 

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