Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

PASTOR'S PENS 2009

January 4th    “He who finds diamonds must grapple in mud and mire because diamonds are not found in polished stones. They are made.”      Henry B. Wilson                 A new year brings a sense of dread for me. There’s a reality of life that I tend to dread. Want to know what it is? I know that there are folk, folk I love, those I’d never suspect, most who should know better...who will quit this year. This time next year, if statistics hold true, there will be married couples at Grace who have filed for divorce. There will be some who have given up on the Christian life. Others will become discouraged and quit their ministry. Some will have either moved on to another church or simply stopped attending any church.                 So are you someone who perseveres and sticks with it? Are you a finisher? Or, do you find it easy to quit? Most of us have times when we’ve given up. Perhaps you had a dream when you were a young person, but somewhere along the line the price for achieving that dream cost too much, so you quit. You settled for what you could get. Maybe it was a relationship that you gave up. It started out as the great love of your life. You imagined you’d be together forever, but something happened. Somehow, you grew apart. Differences seemed irreconcilable. The road to a better relationship was just too steep and too long, so you quit. Now you live with the consequences.                 How about God? Maybe you tried that “religion” thing for a while, but it just didn’t work for you. There was that one thing that you prayed for with all your heart. It didn’t happen. Church became irrelevant, so you quit.                 Our’s is a nation of quitters. And what’s missing is character, the determination to persevere even when it’s uncomfortable, even when we’re tired. Yet, too often instead we choose the path of least resistance. Why? Sadly, we lack that vital spiritual character trait of Perseverance. It’s easier to quit than to persevere. As Bill Hybels writes in his book, “Who Are You When No One’s Looking”: “It’s easier to go out and play than to practice scales. It’s easier to watch TV after work than to take night classes at the community college. It’s easier to walk out of the room during an argument than to stay and work through the conflict. It’s easier to read the paper and drink coffee in your bathrobe on Sunday morning than to get yourself and your family up, dress everybody, face traffic and go to church. It’s easier to do what you want to do with your life than to kneel before God, turn the reins over to Him, and wait patiently and expectantly and sometimes agonizingly for Him to lead you. It’s easier to quit following Jesus than to go through with the painful process of daily surrender.”                 We quit because it seems like the easiest thing to do. Ultimately, though, quitting turns out to be the worst choice. Let me encourage you to add a new character trait for 2009 – perseverance! Following Christ means we must persevere in the Christian life.  Hebrews 12:1-4 is one of those great, moving passages. The writer provides us with a nearly perfect summary of perseverance in the Christian life.                 a) To persevere in the Christian life we must have a goal. A believer is not some unconcerned stroller along the byways of life. He's a traveler with a starting and ending point. He's not a tourist, who returns each night to the place where he started. Instead, he’s a pilgrim who is forever on the way. The goal is the likeness of Jesus Christ. The Christian life is going somewhere. It has a point. It would be good if at the end of each day, we'd ask ourselves: “Am I any further? Am I making progress toward my destination?”                 b) To persevere in the Christian life we need a motivation, "since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses." This great cloud of witnesses refers back to Hebrews 11. This chapter is a wonderful record of other believers who through the ages persevered. They trusted God and proved that He’s faithful. They're witnesses to the possibilities of the life of faith. They show it can be done…because they did it. Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Ruth, David and a host of others will always be enshrined on our minds. It's Faith's Hall of Fame. We’re to emulate their example. Please study both the many interesting characters in the Bible, and the great men and women who have run the race of faith over the course of Church History. You'll learn how they failed, so you don't have to make the same mistakes. You'll learn how they ran well, so that you can imitate their faith. Many of the battles they fought, whether on a personal level or in their ministries, you'll have to fight, too.                 c) To persevere in the Christian life we must remember we have a handicap. While we are encircled by the greatness of the past, we're also handicapped by our own sin. No one would attempt to climb Mount Everest with a backpack of rocks weighing them down. If we're going to travel far, we must travel light. That's why the writer says, "let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles." To persevere we must discard things: habits, sinful pleasures or even friends who hold us back. Often, we'll need Christ's help to enable us to do so.                 d) To persevere in the Christian life we must have a resource. That resource is endurance or perseverance, "let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Perseverance isn’t some dreamy, romantic thing that lends us wings or super hero strength to fly over the difficulties and the hard places of life. Instead, it's a Spirit-given determination, an endurance that goes steadily on, refusing to be deflected. Obstacles don’t daunt it and discouragements do not take its hope away. It's the steadfast endurance which carries on until in the end it gets there.                 Following Christ means that we must persevere in the Christian life. So this year, are you going to quit? Or, on December 31, 2009, by God’s grace will you have been faithful and persevered?