How a Christian Endures Trials || (and I went on a race)

dear reader,

this is a post for the one traveling through a desert

and seeking a Promised Land.

don't give up hope.

I go running every week, and people ask me if I enjoy it.

That makes me laugh. ;)

I think of how my body literally hurts all over, how my lungs feel like they could explode, and how the sun beats down and wants to wither me like a raisin sweltered in the desert heat. I'll look up a hill and count mailboxes as I pass painstakingly slow knowing there's only four more, three more, two more until the finish line!

But I run again. And again. And somehow, yes I do enjoy it. Just like I did that three-tier race in April--running, boating, and biking--even though it was hard, it was beautiful and good.

Maybe that's because when I do this hard thing, it grows me, and I'm stronger and can say, panting, "God did it. He got me up the hill."

Instead of focusing on the pain, I run thinking of the prize: the cold cup of water waiting in an AC home that I can enjoy with the satisfaction that I did something hard and overcame.

Lately, God has been taking this idea further as life throws real-life trials in my face, and through the temptations to focus on the heat, the pain, the stretching, He whispers, count it all joy.

Consider it the truly greatest of joy whenever you find yourselves being beset, my brothers, by trials and temptations of various kinds, since you know that the testing of your faith results in patient endurance.

- James 1:2

But how, Father? How can my painfully weak self rejoice? 

I look at something impossible.

He reminds me, it results in patience. There's a reward.

So I run.

But what makes it worth it is when I realize my Jesus did the same thing before me. And He gave thanks.

Then He took a cup of wine and, after giving thanks, said... "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is about to be poured out in your place."

- Luke 22:17, 20 

 

 

How? How could a Man understand that He was about to go through the most intense, painful agony, spilling His own blood for people who would mock and betray Him? And He thanked God for it? What impossibility!

He went a step further...

Then He took some bread and, after giving thanks, broke it and gave it to the disciples, saying, "This is My body, which is about to be offered up in your place..."

- Luke 22:19 

He thanked God twice.

This is the Jesus I follow.

He was a perfect Man who let His body be broken because He loved us that much.

Jesus was the Passover lamb in Exodus 12 that had to be slaughtered so that the Lord would pass over His people who were marked with the lamb's blood, and thus they were saved while the enemy received punishment. In the same way, I stand in a world torn by sin and death, but I'm washed in His blood and am clean, forgiven, covered.

But after that, God's people still wandered in a desert. They hadn't entered the Promised Land.

And that's why we're walking in a desert today.

These trials, these pains, these things that hurt and confuse, we can give thanks in them because a Promised Land is coming when our King who also suffered will come from Heaven, restore this earth, and establish His Kingdom in it! Wrong will be destroyed, our bodies will be freshly new, and Eden will spread across this broken land.

That's why Jesus endured. He knew there was a joy set before Him.

...run the race set before us with patient endurance, keeping our eyes fixed on the One who pioneered our faith and makes it blameless, that is, on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him patiently endured the cross, thinking nothing of the shame of that kind of death, and now sits at the very right hand of the throne of God.

- Hebrews 12:1-2 

It starts with a Lamb giving His blood, and we can travel on knowing He will be victorious.

So consider it joy.

Oh friend, consider it joy!

 

When we run and sweat and hurt, may we know it's drawing us to the finish line and making us more into the person He always intended us to be.

Beautiful.

Whole.

Holy.

A person that can walk and talk with God as we did in the garden of Eden.

And that's how we endure.

God does impossible things like that.

God's been putting this urging on my heart over the last weeks, and I hope it blesses you! I was inspired by my lovely friend Laurel, and you can read another hug of encouragement on her website here!

And, just sayin', my favorite book is about to come out and is stuffed full of encouragement for the soul fighting to be loyal to their King. ;) Keep your eyes out for a cover reveal soon!

You're so loved, friend. Travel on!

((photos credit to Alesha who photographed a triathlon I got to be part of))

~♥~