This morning is one of those mornings when I realize the value of the exercise of spiritual discipline. Every morning I commit myself to first telling God thank you for simply giving me another day. Then I open the Bible study I am working on. It begins with scripture, then it breaks it down verse by verse, providing interpretation and application, using scripture itself to interpret scripture, for that is proper way to study God’s Word. I ask the Holy Spirit to come be my teacher and to open my mind to understand things, I am not smart enough to do on my own. I make notes on the verses. When my study time is complete, I go into prayer mode. I start with praise, worship, and thanksgiving. Then I have a book in which I have written down the names of the prayer requests I am aware of and the names of those who God places on my heart. Because I am on the prayer team at my church, I then pray through those requests. Having completed all this, I can now go on with my day. Yes, there are days I might fail to do these things for various reasons. But most days this is the course I follow.
Sounds good doesn’t it. Makes me kinda look like some super Christian. I am not. I am probably the least of all, I give Paul a good run at the “chief of all sinners” thing.
This morning, in the midst of this chaos and uncertainty we are living in, I woke up and wondered, why even get up? I know the news today will be bad. The market will continue to drop, there are more sick people, and some have died. It’s dreary and rainy out. The government doesn’t want me to go out, there is little to do anyway, everything being closed, and when I do go out, some are going to call me selfish and taking risks that I shouldn’t be exposing them to. So why not just lay in bed and let depression have its way with me?
But I did get up. I thanked God for another Day. I made my tea and sat down and followed through with my morning spiritual discipline. You see, this discipline is more than what it sounds like on paper. It is time with God. Every single bit of it is God and I in conversation. It is God and I relating and loving each other. It is the spiritual equivalent of a husband and wife going through all the things two lovers go through. It is intimacy. It is conversation. It is finding comfort in being held and being touched. It is everything marriage ought to be. We are the bride of Christ. It is everything childhood ought to be. God is our father and we are His children. It is the perfect meal. My hunger is fed, and my thirst is quenched, for Jesus is the bread of life and He is the living water.
Here is my morning Bible passage.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. - Hebrews 12:1-3
What God had to say to me this morning is perfect to where I was when I woke up. I can look back at those great men of faith, who ran the race of life before me. They made it through many great and difficult trials and battles the same way we must. They looked to God, to the hope of the coming Jesus, who not only founded their faith, He perfected it. And because of their faith in Jesus, whom they had never seen and had far less revelation of than you and I have, they endured the agonizing marathon of life.
Because of Jesus, they did not grow weary or fainthearted. They put aside the weights of both worldly things, not sins, just weights of the world, and the sin that weighs us down.
Why get out of bed? Why go on? Because Jesus endured the cross, despised the shame, and now sits at the right hand of His Father where He has founded our faith and he is perfecting it until the day He takes us home.
These are difficult days. It would be easy to just quit.
But I shall not. I will look to Jesus. I will keep getting up every morning and spending time with Him and His Father. You must do the same. The only hope we have is Jesus and that hope is a sure hope.
I leave you with a scripture that, thanks to my wife, who gave me a little visor clip that had it on it, allowed me every day at work to remember its hope. This is what we need to remember in these scary days.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint. - Isaiah 40:28-31
Fix your eyes in Jesus. Then run and don’t get weary.
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