Chasing FailureSample

“God’s On Repeat”

We all know there are things in our lives that we could do more of. We all can eat better, save more, work out more, pray more, and read our Bibles more. But it doesn’t mean we have the strong desire to change. Inevitably, we start to eat better, save more, work out more, pray more, and read our Bibles more to the point that we feel like we’ve eaten healthy enough, saved enough, worked out enough, prayed enough, and read enough to hit cruise control in those areas of our life. In fact, when we are encouraged to do any of the above, it can often go in one ear and out of the other. We feel like we have time to get better later. We have great intentions of improving our lives in a few months when our circumstances are comfortable enough for change.

I recently lost a friend to stage 4 cancer, and at her memorial service her husband had the courage to get up and share some lessons he had learned from his wife who had just passed away 5 days prior. She was a person who gave her best to every single day she lived. She inspired many. And I walked away from that funeral with this encouragement: Become today who you intend to be tomorrow. The bridge between who you are and who you want to become is simply courage. At some point you’ve just got to wake up and make a decision to get over the pile of excuses you’ve built up in your head for not being the person you really want to be. 

In Joshua 1, Moses has just passed away and now it’s time for Joshua to fill some pretty large shoes. And God tells him something he’s already heard THREE times in Deutoronomy: Be strong and be Courageous. And now God is telling him the same thing another two times. Again this isn’t our mother telling us to clean our room over and over again. This is God. He only has to speak once and it should be enough to move us. But strength and bravery were so high on God’s list that he wanted to make sure that Joshua understood the concept that by the time we get through the first nine verses of the first chapter, Joshua will have heard the same encouragement SIX times.  

What’s God been repeatedly saying to you over and over that you’ve yet to act on?