Perseverance & Exhaustion

When do I press on? When do I rest? Anyone north of adulthood knows these questions all too well. When is it time to fight the good fight, and when is it time to take a moment, take a breath and regroup?

Frustration comes faster and faster these days. Social upheaval. Political division. Friends against friends. Families locked in constant debate and argument. Churches struggling to hold their congregations together. An economy that tumbles as often as it surges. It’s… exhausting.

And yet as Christians we’re called to persevere. Take note, though, that we’re not called to enter the fray the world lays out before us. We’re not meant to fight the fights the world wants us to fight. We’re not meant to enter the debates the world dares us to enter. We’re not meant to battle the battles the world so desperately wants us to engage in.

We are a people of the gospel. We should live, breathe and bleed the gospel. If it doesn’t have anything to do with spreading His Word, then we shouldn’t have much to do with it. But we get pulled in. Roped in. Duped into believing our “good fight”, the good fight we’re supposed to be a part of, is the fight the world defines.

But we aren’t a people of the world.

We are a people of the gospel. We belong to God. We serve our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He is our King. He is our Hope. He is our Answer. He is our Salvation. Anything else that claims, pretends or “feels” like any of those things is a counterfeit. Pure and simple.

This morning, this week, this month… don’t let your focus lock on anything the world deems crucial or imperative or necessary. Focus on the things God deems crucial, imperative and necessary. Those things will always be people. The lost. The hurt. The dying. The suffering. The frightened. The people who need Jesus.

God has pointed me in more directions than I can count. But the one thing every road has in common is that it’s lined with people who need Jesus. And the reason I’ve been placed on each of those roads is to find those people and tell them about Him.

Frankly, we don’t have the time or the luxury to get distracted by anything else. We never have and we never will, whether we have another day or another decade or whatever time you want to fill in that blank.

We are a people of the gospel. So let’s get to gettin’.