One night as I laid on my mat with the mosquito net hovering over me, I began to think to myself “Lord I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I am tired, I am weary, and these darn mosquitoes keep nagging me!” I couldn’t fall asleep because it was so hot. In the stillness of the night, I began to think about home and all the things I wanted to do and the people I wanted to visit. It was my only escape, but realizing home was still so far away, I eventually came back to reality and prayed for the Lord to change my heart…
The next morning I knew I needed only one thing and that was to spend time with my Heavenly Father. I realized I had been doing this in my own strength. Its funny how God sometimes uses people a million miles away to speak to you – this time it was my own mother. My mom is always so gentle and sincere with her words. She has such a wealth of wisdom but I don’t always listen. So there I was talking to my parents via skype, which has been a great form of communication for us, and my mom asked me so “what scripture has God been laying on your heart lately?” I couldn’t even make up an answer, so I quickly by passed the question by telling her of some cool story of what the Lord had done. The truth of the matter was that I was neglecting my time with the Lord. Of course my intentions were sincere but something would always come up as soon as I opened my Bible and I did not fight the distractions. Even though these distractions were pure, they always robbed me of my time with God eventually making me feel quite empty inside.
This morning was different, I finally came to the end of my own strength and I desperately needed to be filled back up with the Holy Spirit. So I was determined that I would not relent until God spoke to me this morning. This is what He spoke to my weakness, through a podcast by Joel Brooks, on the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 11:39 – 12:3
I was losing my focus. I started to grow numb to God’s workings and weary in doing good, but God encouraged me through the author of Hebrews to not grow content and to not lose heart. That this “race” is hard, God never promised our lives would be easy or that we could just coast through life with no problems, no the author is saying “RUN” and run with perseverance. As children of God, we are part of an amazing plan of what God is doing to redeem the world. He wants us to run. You can’t run with your own strength. Faith is a gift. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. If you could do it yourself you wouldn’t need Jesus, you wouldn’t need a Saviour. The people of the Bible are not a witness to their own strength or glory. They are a witness to how great God is to use their own weaknesses to bring Him Glory. He laid down His Glory to do the work of the Lord. We are to lay down little things. He laid down his life. When we understand that, it transforms us. You cannot run the race unless there is a joy before you. We are the joy set before him. This fuels us because He is our JOY. Everything he did on the cross. That transforms us to run the race for Him. You do not just exist. You have a purpose. Now that I realized my focus, I had a new love for Africa, for the people and for the work we are doing here…
