Keep On: The Perseverance of Faithfulness
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much.”
Luke 16:10
Do you ever feel like perseverance is a bad word?
Or at least a word we don’t really want to have to deal with? When the walls seem to be closing in and the roof feels like it is about to fall down…perseverance is needed. When you find yourself frustrated with the daily responsibilities of home, work, and family, a little shot of perseverance goes a long way!
Learning to be faithful with the daily responsibilities trains us to be faithful with larger tasks. In this process, perseverance enables us to stick with it, to keep on keepin’ on.
We need this when…
we can’t take one more bad attitude.
there is a mess in the freezer.
the whole house is a disaster zone.
a ball point pen explodes in the dryer…
there is no end in sight to the moving boxes…
These are just a few of the minor aggravations that call for perseverance. Sometimes these are small things and sometimes they are huge, but daily faithfulness helps us keep on keepin’ on!
Here are some areas that have called for perseverance in my life.
Maybe you can relate:
- When no one is listening, talk to God anyway.
- When you are standing in the rubble pile of your own doing, believe Him anyway.
- When those around you are unappreciative, serve them anyway.
- When nobody seems to care, bless them anyway.
- When people you love are acting unlovely, love them anyway.
- When you are confused and cannot tell which way is up, seek God anyway.
- When there seems to be no answer, ask Him anyway.
- When you have confessed the same sin over and over, confess it again anyway.
- When you struggle to have hope, cling to Christ anyway.
- When your plan isn’t working, trust Him anyway.
- When you are weary, rest in Him anyway.
- When relationships seem to be a battle, fight the good fight anyway.
For me, these are some of the ways that God is teaching me to press on, to strive for faithfulness in the daily challenges.
Somehow we fight against the very tools that our Sovereign God often brings into our lives to build in us what is pleasing to Him. How could things be different, or at least less stressful, if we learn not to fight against God’s hand when He chooses to use trials to shape us? Like it or not, perseverance and endurance are some of God’s most powerful, yet difficult tools for molding faith and character. Hard words. True words.
“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. ” (The Message)
James 1:2-4
What things in your life call for perseverance?
Still More? You Gotta be Kidding!
Do you ever have those days when you are just in a snit?
Days when your best effort is nowhere near enough to close the gap of all that needs to be done?
Days when “just one more thing” is enough to push you over the edge of reason?
Days when you just don’t like what the Bible has to say about things like patience, rejoicing, and kindness?
I must confess to a bit of an attitude about a little phrase that has been getting my goat lately: STILL MORE.
At first glance, these two words seem pretty harmless, not the pull-your-hair-out and grit-your-teeth kind of language. Think again.
Take a look at this:
“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment…” Philippians 1:9
And this:
“Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel still more..” 1 Thessalonians 4:1
Translation: You’re doing great…but you can do better.
Or how about this one:
“But earnestly desire the greater gifts.And I show you a still more excellent way.–This is the introduction to the great Love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13.
AGGHHH….
These are not the words you want to hear when you’re having a snit kind of day. Still more? Really?
You gotta be kidding!
And just how much is still more?
I can’t.
I won’t.
Can’t you see the snit-steam coming out my ears?
[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@GingHarrington” hidden_hashtags=”#momhumor”]How do you know when “still more” is enough more?[/tweetthis]
In my rational moments, I realize there isn’t really an answer to this question. When you get down to it, still more is an attitude rather than an amount.
To love or excel still more is to be willing to press on with forward motion. There is a desire to see what is around the next bend. Still more holds great possibilities in it’s back pocket. Still more is like the proverbial boy scout…always prepared and always ready.
To have a still more kind of heart, you have something in you that just can’t accept that this is the best you can do. You’re unwilling to accept “good enough,” ” almost,” or “status quo.”
Still more.
Yep, some days, I just don’t like that phrase.
Photo Credit:Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78356339@N00/291293757/
When God Sets us Straight, Part 2
God’s grace is more powerful than the worst of our sin.
Believe it. Choose it. Embrace it.
Yesterday, we took a look at the life of the Apostle Paul. If you missed it, you can read part one of this post here: When God Sets Us Straight, part 1.
In a different way, yet like Paul, I can sincerely insist that I am right, but be in the wrong. I can be blinded by my self-rightness to God’s true intention and purpose. Believe me, I have plenty of “don’t get it” moments. My good intentions can be misdirected or misinformed.
This is my need for grace—the grace of truth, the grace of forgiveness, the grace of setting me straight.
How freeing to understand that God’s plan is not dependent on me always getting it right. When God sets me straight, He works in spite of me because that’s how grace works.
Paul could have kept his focus on his past mistakes, the guilt of past sins. He could have, but he didn’t. In light of his past, he wrote these words,
“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do:forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14
If you find that you have been struggling to let go of guilt over past issues and sins, be encouraged by Paul’s words. Remember that God’s forgiveness is complete and His grace and truth set us straight.
Enjoy this song by Big Daddy Weave: Redeemed. Love this song!
[youtube_sc url=MEChKo–jdc]
Other posts on God’s Forgiveness include:
When We Keep Making the Same Mistakes
When God Sets Us Straight, Part 1
Have you ever wondered if God has a purpose for your life?
Most of us have, and the answer to that question is a huge YES. Most of us believe this, but have you ever looked at yourself, added up your good points, subtracted out your not-so-pretty traits, and then started in on all the reasons why God shouldn’t bother with you?
We can be tempted to see our faults and mistakes as things that will always hold us back, tethering our feet to the past and tainting our future.
Even when we know better, we can still fall into the trap of feeling that somewhere along the way, we messed up and missed out on God’s will for our lives. Thinking like this falls short of the reality of God’s grace, the wonder of His forgiving love.
Remember the Apostle Paul?
Days long before he preached the gospel, helped build the early church, and wrote significant portions of the New Testament, he persecuted the church. You can read Paul’s story here. In fact, at the beginning of Galatians, he wrote these words,
” For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how Iused to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it…”
–Galatians 1:13 NASB
In this passage Paul is neither bragging or condemning his past actions. He is not stuck in the past. He simply relates what he did for the purpose of showing God’s amazing grace.
When you have it all wrong…
Today’s world is filled with people who believe that it doesn’t matter what you believe… as long as you believe it sincerely. Paul is a vivid example of one who passionately and zealously believed, yet what he believed was wrong. Dead wrong. Trying to stamp out the “threat” of the blasphemous Christ followers, Paul literally hunted them down. At the beginning of this letter to the Galatians, Paul refers to God’s grace in light of his former way of life.
Paul was dangerously off the mark, working against the grain of the very purpose of the God he gave everything to serve.
Not what you would expect: Grace in action.
Instead of punishing or destroying Paul for his misguided reign of terror, God acted miraculously to show him the truth, turning him from darkness to light. God set him straight, not for the purpose of punishment, which is what we would expect that Paul deserved.
God did not condemn Paul in light of what he had done; God worked with him in light of what he could do. Did you catch that?
God dramatically moved Paul in the right direction, showing him truth, and placing a calling on his life. He took the education and passion Paul already had, and channeled it in the right direction, for the right purpose. God’s plan for Paul’s life-purpose was not ruined by Paul’s sin, his incorrect beliefs, or by the harm he caused. Grace in this situation is almost unimaginable—it shocks us, cutting across the line of what is deserved.
Paul’s story is a one-of-a-kind, but somehow God had a purpose for Paul’s life that extended beyond the mistakes he made. Do we believe God will do the same for us?
Transitions in Parenting: Filling and Emptying the Family Nest
Thanks for joining us for the second part of Bonnie’s Guest Post!
by Bonnie Brunt
Have you ever noticed that sometimes God does not agree with our plans? We thought life was crazy enough with twin boys.
But, God said, He would decide.
When my precious little boys were just over 4 years old, I realized I was pregnant again. This time, I cried for 3 days and prayed for only one. Transitions in parenting can be a challenge!
Let me just say, I’m not a terrible Mom. I was just stressed. At this time in our life, we had sold a relatively new restaurant that worked us near death, and had just opened our second gift shop in a major mall in Atlanta that was literally working us TO exhaustion.
I don’t really understand how I got pregnant, for I was staying in a hotel 3 nights a week so I could work open to close in one shop, while my husband worked the other one, and basically, the day care was raising our little boys. Not your perfect little family environment, but we were doing what we thought was the best we could do. And, now, I’m pregnant, again, and crying, and tired, and stressed.
God really intervened at this point in my life, but I wouldn’t give Him the credit here, not yet… not right now, but that’s another story for another time.
Tom, that’s my husband, and I, ended up closing our shops, moving back to my hometown in South Carolina, and in September, 3 months after John and Stuart turned 5, our baby girl was born and we named her Grace. (We were pretty sure we would need as much grace as we could get.)
God had mercy on my frayed nerves–she was not a criminal!
We took 2 years off. 2 years of just raising our kids, playing with our kids, regrouping and figuring out what we were going to do and where we were headed….as a family. Those two years were pure gift from God. Transitional re-grouping!
My brother has two boys at this time also, who spend a lot of time with us. They are 3 and 5 years older than my boys. Our nest was filling up with lots of love and family.
As life progresses, my children grow and are just the happiest group of kids you can know. My house is always filled with laughter, always it seems, additional children, chaos, dust, crumbs, dirty clothes, and joy. I realize that my purpose at this time is to be a Mom. I LOVE being a mom to these two criminals and one little princess. Life is remarkable.
We build a home on my Dad’s farm and my children grow. We are soccer mom and dad, football, basketball, dance lessons, whatever my children do. We are John and Stuart’s mom and dad. We are Grace’s mom and dad. We are overjoyed to be their parents. We aren’t really Bonnie and Tom as much as we are our children’s parents.
As the years pass, so does my brother. ..at 47. At this time, his youngest son comes to live with us for a while. This is good, just another mouth to feed, clean, do laundry, etc. He doesn’t stay forever, but we did enjoy him while we had him. It was extra stress during a stressful time with teenagers, but that’s OK. He needed us for a while.
My children are growing, becoming teenagers and going to college. The criminals go off to college, and it’s just us and the girl… and our dog Hazel. More transition.
My other nephew moves in for the summer, between semesters, and stays for 3 years.
Difficult Days
Lots and lots of stressful times during my daughter’s senior year in high school when my sweet son John is nearly killed in a car wreck, requiring nearly a year of recovery, but he does recover. This year, my sweet son, Stuart, leaves for Kuwait, for a year – he’s in the military now. My amazing son John has survived, recovered, graduated college, and moved out to attend graduate school. My precious daughter, Grace, graduated from high school and is a college freshman. My nephew, Robbie, moved out for a new job and a sweet bride.
After all of this…our nest is empty.
Effective this past August, my house is home to Tom and me…. And Hazel and Waldo, our dogs, but people wise, it’s just us!
Tom and I are empty nesters! That’s what they call us. It’s been 23 years. We’ve raised our 3, helped with my two nephews, countless animals, and a variety of children’s friends.
It’s been a wild, loud, dysfunctional, chaotic and glorious ride filled with transition!
My friends have not looked forward to this time of kids leaving the nest, the emptiness. They have anticipated this time with sadness and loss. Some have cried. Some have panicked. Some are just lost.
We have just been way too busy to even prepare for this time, this big empty house, the quietness.
Ohhhh the quiet.
I clean my kitchen and it stays clean. I do maybe 2 loads of laundry a week. My refrigerator has ONLY the food WE like. My husband likes me. I actually like my husband! Who knew?
We go out to dinner 2 to 3 times a week and NEVER to McDonald’s or the Pizza Hut. We can sit in our house without the TV playing. We swing on our front porch swing and listen to the wind and the birds. We laugh with each other again. We are easy. We are gentle. We work a lot, but we aren’t in a hurry.
We LOVE to chat with our children via email and talk on the phone with them. We delight when they come home and just cannot WAIT for Stuart to come back from Kuwait. It will be a joyous time for our whole family. But, we are not sad, panicked, or feeling loss.
We are delightfully rediscovering those two people who got married because they loved each other nearly 27 years ago.
God is good. He has watched over us, listened to many tears, sorrows, and delighted in much praise and joy. He has carried us through raging storms and violence. He has walked next to us through calm. He has been there when I didn’t seek Him, even when I should have. Patient.
Over the past year, which has been tormenting and joyful for my family, Tom and I have grown together and been ripped apart due to just life. I have prayed fervently that, through it all, that God would show me how to really love my husband and to “bring us back to each other”. God heard me… and he answered.
So, empty nest…bring it on! For us, it’s not a time to focus on what we have lost, but what we are re-discovering! It’s our time to be proud of our children, watching them grow, using skills and tools that we have helped them develop over their life, while we focus on the start to a new phase of a full life. It’s exciting!
Thanks, God.
Life With Kids: Filling the Nest
A while back I wrote about God’s faithfulness as my children headed back to school. At the time, I asked if anyone wanted to tell of God’s faithfulness with their family. My good friend Bonnie took me up on the request, sharing how God filled,...
How to Change Your Life with One Simple Thing
How to live life whole?
Where to create balance?
How to fold your heart around joy each day? Desires, questions, aspirations and inspirations spin willy-nilly in my head as January melts into February. So fast? How did this year race off so quickly? Time fritters like sand in my hands. How to make the best use of the time given, each day wrapped in the gift of 24 hours?
What is the secret to a life well lived?
My mind meanders to one aspect, one word: holiness. Holy, set apart, whole, consecrated, sacred, dedicated, pure, devoted.
I could write down goals and stamp them onto the next eleven months. I probably will, but I have been known to overwhelm myself with goals and intentions, never seeming to fully accomplish the entire task. Where is holiness in this? This year I am going to explore a new way to let holiness shine into each day.
The power of a moment.
Days are made up of hours; hours are made up of moments. Change the moment; change the day. Change the day, change the time, change the heart. Holiness moves through the small things, the moments, simple and short. Added together, holy moments change lives and steer destinies God’s direction. But it all comes down to choices and decisions made…one moment at at time. If I reach for holiness in the moment, what difference could it make?
Transformational grace.
Heart, mind, soul, and strength.
How to live and love in all of these, the wholeness of self set right in Christ?
Forgiven, accepted, re-made. All comes down to the life we live each moment.
With this in mind, with my eye on the small things, the daily steps that walk through the week, I focus in on the small things. Simple things. The moment things.
One simple thing.
What is one simple thing you want to do? To learn? To give away? To let go of? If I choose to breathe life-holy into the simple things each day, what will happen?
Here is a list of Simple Things that can become holy moments. Whole moments of giving love–heart, soul, mind, and strength–to God and to others.
One simple thing at a time.
Choose holiness in the simple things. Choose life in the simple moments. Reach for your goals, seek God, love your family, do your work, but each day choose the holy in the simple things and let the moments add up to God’s best for you. One moment at a time.
One simple thing…today. In this moment.
1 small thing
1 heart thing
1 family thing
1 practical thing
1 fun thing
1 God thing
1 friend thing
1 better thing
1 overcome it thing
1 spirit thing
1 thankful thing
1 accomplish it thing
1 new thing
1 healthy thing
1 joy thing
1 surrender thing
1 change thing
1 finish it thing
1 make it better thing
1 attitude thing
1 healing thing
1 celebrate it thing
What one simple thing inspires you in this moment? How can these simple moments become holy and whole, adding up to a life lived well with joy?
This is how to change your life with one simple thing.
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him… fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.
Romans 12:1-2, portions
What simple moments will you choose? Share your thoughts and spread your inspiration.
A Little Fun with New Year’s Resolutions
Enjoy a humorous take on the challenge of making New Year’s resolutions and our tendency to be overly ambitious with our goal setting.
*This is an older, but popular post from my early days of blogging in 2010.
The Lighter Side of Making Resolutions
Before January completely gets away from me, I want to get my brain around some goals and resolutions for this year. Pre-occupied with other things-I don’t remember what exactly-I gave a momentary thought to making a few New Years Resolutions. The trouble with momentary thoughts is they don’t go too far. They don’t last long, and they rarely accomplish much. One year I was very organized with my resolutions, writing them on a white board. Proud of my good intentions, I posted them in a prominent place–the fridge. Lose, not loose–you get the jist on #1!
You can see I’m getting just a little carried away with my New Year’s Resolutions. Winning the Nobel Prize might be a bit of a reach…
Have you ever noticed how easy it can be to get a tad over zealous when it comes to all of the great things you want to accomplish on that magical date when the calendar turns from December to January? For a brief period of time, any thing seems possible. The sky is the limit…and then…
You either forget all about your lofty goals.
Or…you fall smack down, face plant into reality.
Yes indeed, resolutions can be tricky things.
One day, I passed by an unusual sign with a sale I can’t afford to miss. When we lived in Okinawa, Japan, I laughed aloud when I drove past this sign. This is the sale of the year for those that find themselves challenged when it comes to successful resolutions.
Now that is a novel idea for making money. Such a funny way to look at New Year’s resolutions! If you can’t make them, you can buy those pesky resolutions…and on sale no less. This is great for those of us who are a little behind on the whole make-yourself-better-resolution thing.
I have a few questions about this:
- Do you buy them one at a time or do they come in a multi-pack?
- Will they need batteries to make them work?
- Do they come in sizes, or are they one size fits all?
- Is there any maintenance, care, or feeding involved?
- Is assembly required?
Do the sale resolutions come with a money back guarantee? If so, I will hop on this deal right away. It is hard enough to say…lose 15 pounds…but a money back guarantee…I just might be interested.
If these resolutions are on sale, does that mean these are the ones no one wanted? Things like, I will read the dictionary every day and eat 5 servings of vegetables. Useful things like take up tidily-winks ( I am pretty sure no one under the age of 80 plays that anymore).
Do I really want to spend my hard-earned cash on reject or leftover New Year’s Resolutions? What good is that actually going to do me? Not much.
It is Not Too Late
So, whether you do it the old fashioned way or buy them on sale, it is not too late to consider some goals or resolutions for this year. (You see, I am familiar with this procrastination strategy–if it is after the first of January, you are off the hook to make any resolutions.) And for those of you who have made resolutions and already let them go by the wayside, pick those babies back up and stick with it. We just might be better for it:)
Once we get those resolutions nailed down, here’s a few thoughts to tuck into your pocket:
Commit your works to the Lord
And your plans will be established.
Proverbs 16:3
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33
More posts to start your year:
- Simple Habits to Nurture a Balanced Life This New Year
- 10 Life-Changing Bible Verses to Inspire Hope This Year
- 5 Tips to Reset Healthy Habits for Spirit, Soul & BodyA Little Fun with New Year’s Resolutions
- How to Find Fresh Faith for Your New Year
- Some Thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions
- Make Today’s Goals from Yesterday’s Lessons
What is one of your New Year’s Resolutions?
Discover the Power of Small, Faithful Choices
Start your year with practical ways to grow in faith right where you are. Holy in the Moment! is filled with encouragement, real-life stories, and simple steps to help you walk in holiness every day. Grab your copy today and discover how small, intentional choices can draw you closer to God.
Worship Tips You Don’t Want to Miss
32 tips for worship–how convenient. One for every day of the month with a couple left over. I’d love to say I planned it this way… To tell the truth, there are still lots of tips that I didn’t cover. Some of these I am aware of and some are yet to be discovered. This is one of the things that I love about worship–there is always more. So much more! We can never learn it all, do it all, or figure it all out. Take this list and use it for your quiet times; then begin adding your own worship tips. We can never come to the end of God and we will never come to the end of worship.
If you missed tips 1-20, you will find them posted here:
10 Practical Tips to Deepen Your Worship Now
10 More Practical Tips to Get the Most out of Your Worship
21. Treasure and ponder deep in your heart.
Meditation relates to this worship that ponders. To meditate means to attend to, to practice, be diligent in, to ponder or imagine. Treasure the truth of Christ.
22. Believe and receive.
The gift of grace is given, but our job is to receive it, to reach out and take hold of this treasure so lovingly given. We can only receive by believing.
Faith is the energy that empowers our hearts to take hold of grace.
23. Look beyond.
Too often we are satisfied with the joy of God’s blessings, rather than the joy of knowing our God who gives. Look through each blessing, appreciating something about God, the Giver of all good.
24. Worship by giving a gift of prayer.
Prayer is a blessing and gift that you can give to someone. Trusting God in prayer is always an expression of worship.
25. Evaluate your faith.
The following reflective questions are a great way to spark worship through deeper, more intentional faith and can be used when reading any passage of Scripture:
Do I really believe this?
Do I act like I believe this?
Do I think like I believe this?
26. Be aware of 3 symptoms of a Worship Rut.
Spiritual ADD: Isaiah 42:40
You have seen many things, but you do not observe them;
Your ears are open, but none hears.
Pay attention.
Be observant.
Care about what you see and hear.
Disengaged Faith: Isaiah 29:13
“Because this people draw near with their words
And honor Me with their lip service,
But they remove their hearts far from Me,
And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,
Mean what you say in worship. God cares more about your heart than your words.
Be real with God.
Put your heart into it.
Meaningless Repetition: Matthew 6:7
And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.
It’s not how much you say, or how many times you say it that causes God to answer prayer. Pray with sincere heart and simple words. Put your faith in God and not in your method.
27. Engage: Break out of your worship rut.
All three of these verses point to problems in worship that are often the result of disengaged faith–going through the motions and faith in the formula or activity. Routine in worship can tempt us to fall into a pattern of insincerity -not because we do not believe, but because we are on auto-pilot.
Explore ways to incorporate fresh ideas into your worship. Change up the pace. Break out of a worship rut as you discover the way you engage most naturally in worship and feel closest to God.
28. The worship of gratitude.
Because God gives, I receive with grateful worship. Worship that pleases God is a holy awe, bathed in grace, and entered into by gratitude.
29. Love as God loves and do what God does.
Worship reflects the glory of Christ as we honor Him in the way we treat others. Sincere worship is to show my awe-filled appreciation for the grace I have received by extending grace to others.
30. Sing a new song.
Written, spoken, whispered, shouted, or sung, a new song rises from a heart touched by God. A new song is fresh, relevant, intimate, personal, resounding with the testimony of what God has done in our lives.
31. Remember you are not alone.
In the midst of relational worship we discover that worship is not us our our side, trying to please God who is on the other side. When we worship in spirit and truth, our worship can be a partnership of the Holy Spirit within us praising and lifting up the Father, bearing witness with us and through us.
32. Press through circumstance and press into worship.
Difficulty can be the fire in which powerful worship is forged. Worship is sometimes the pathway to deliverance. When the going gets tough, the tough get worshipping.
A Final Word of Encouragement
Congratulations on completing The Christmas Worship Challenge! Cue the confetti and let’s do a happy dance!
What an incredible experience to witness how God has moved in your hearts and lives through this journey. As you step into the new year, I encourage you to continue nurturing the habits of worship you have cultivated. Let this be the beginning of a deeper and more vibrant relationship with God.
If you’re looking to go even further, I invite you to check out my book, Holy in the Moment, for more practical ways to live out your faith. You can also join me on the Habits of Hope podcast, where we explore how to develop spiritual rhythms that bring hope and renewal. Let’s keep growing together in faith and worship!
Thanks for joining me in the journey of embracing the challenge of intentional worship! Leave a comment and let me know how the Christmas Worship Challenge has impacted you!
*This is an affiliate link at no cost to you.
