Finishing Strong

It's been a very long haul, but we are almost finished with the remodel of my parents' bathroom. We've been working on it since late February, using a ton of vacation time, evenings and weekends. The shower has been functional for a couple of weeks now, so we're down to the final finishing touches. Some trim here, repaint there, the details are all that's left.

Through the process, I've been given several opportunities to "call it good" and leave it mostly finished...ugly, but functional. And every time it's come up, I've had to decline the opportunity to bag it, tired as I was, because it didn't yet fit the picture I had in my mind when I started.

Life is like that, isn't it? We work, toil and press on, sometimes through seemingly impossible circumstances and constantly we hear the whispers. "You've earned your rest, just go ahead and stop. Everyone will understand." "No one really cares, you know...just let it go." And when you're tired and worn out, if you don't keep your eyes on the end game, on the finish line, on finishing strong - you can listen and you can rationalize easing up or even quitting.

That's just what Satan wants. He knows that the only real victory he can win over a Christ-filled person is to get them to quit. That's why discouragement and depression are two of his favorite weapons. Paired with fatigue, he has successfully ended the journey to destiny for countless millions of believers.

So wake up to the enemy's scheme. Don't give in and don't give up. As Winston Churchill's famous graduation speech so eloquently puts it, "Never, never, never quit."

Finish strong!

Oldfangled Ideas

As I was thinking of what to write, I was tempted to call this post Newfangled Ideas but I realized that the ideas in question are really just new to me, and maybe to you. Others have had, or known of, these ideas throughout history.

I learned more this weekend about the power of belief than I had thought possible. After all, I'd made a sort of study of that sort of thing many years ago. I learned then that if you truly believed something, you would act in such as way as to make it come to pass. It's called the law of attraction by some. By some it is described in this way, "What you focus on, you make room for*." I had become cynical in my study. I'd read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (I don't recommend it unless you're really into deliverance). I'd taken a class based on Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I'd helped facilitate some of the workshops and it seemed to all come down to a common denominator.

Take truths from scripture (usually Proverbs), strip out the references to God, repackage them in secular humanistic language and make MILLIONS of dollars and build a personality cult. It seemed to me to all come down to making money off the poor saps who desperately wanted to have it all and who were willing to spend a large percentage of their incomes to get there, only to find out that the principles don't always work. At least not for the vast majority of us.

Why?

This weekend, I learned a big part of the answer from a Christian perspective and it makes total sense. You see, Jesus did say we could do all things if only we believed and had faith. So the principle is truth established by God and manifested in Jesus. The difference is that He had no unbeliefs swimming around in his sub-concious mind. We do. We have these areas of unbelief, many of which can be formed at early ages and unless we "reprogram" that area of unbelief, we will self-destruct in our attempts to succeed. We have to get rid of judgments against ourselves and others. We have to accept ourselves. We have to fully believe.

We, the Church, have all the reason in the world to believe for miracles of healing, resurrection from the dead, signs and wonders for our FOUNDER manifested all those things and left with the reassurance that we would do even greater things than these. So why aren't we? Why are so many in the Church running on empty?

Let's take up the challenge to look at our unbelief and challenge it with truth. Let's start believing, truly believing for the miracles and let GOD do the deciding, eh? Don't ya know our enemy will just hate that? Don't ya know there is a dying world out there desperate for the supernatural reality of Christ in us? Let's just do it.

* I just received a comment that I had misquoted someone so I've corrected it inline with the rest of the text. Somehow, I merged two statements into a single quote. The actual two thoughts are these, "What you focus on, you make room for. What you fear, you empower." My apologies for the mistake and thank you, Greg for the correction - and for reading my blog!