To the Finish!

Persistence is what gets us through many obstacles in life, mine in particular: long distance racing. I love competing in races, but I can't say I love to run. It's the feeling of attaining the goal by reaching the finish line that drives me. It is said that it's easy to start something, but hard to finish it. Without continuous training and focusing on the prize in the end, all time spent preparing would have been wasted. I was inspired when I saw an elderly pass me up as fast as lightning with his shirt reading, "This is my 38th marathon at the age of 76!" Wow, talk about finishing strong!

-Raquel

Persistence
by Paul Faulkner

So make every effort to apply the benefits of these promises to your life. Then your faith will produce a life of moral excellence. A life of moral excellence leads to knowing God better. Knowing God leads to self-control. Self-control leads to patient endurance, and patient endurance leads to godliness. Godliness leads to love for other Christians, and finally you will grow to have genuine love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more you will become productive and useful in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop these virtues are blind or, at least, very shortsighted. They have already forgotten that God has cleansed them from their old life of sin. (2 Peter 1:5-9 NLT 1st Ed.)

In America--pretty much all of what is called Western culture--we want it today, we want it now, and we want it to be great. You know, we want patience and we say "We want it right now!" It's kind of "our thing," isn't it?

But, it takes a long time to become the person you really want to be. It does take long suffering and persistence and not giving up and doing it over until you get it right and apologizing for the things you did wrong. You just have to keep on working on yourself to be the kind of person you want to be--the kind of person God wants you to be.

The neat thing is that God helps us in the midst of all this striving by giving his Spirit to us that works inside of us. Romans 8 reminds us that as we wait in patience the Spirit helps even in our weaknesses (Romans 8:26).

All you have to do is ask and persist. He will begin working on it now...today.