Today's Devotional Thought
February 27, 2013 by Rachel Piferi
Disciplined Endurance
A warrior is built on the battlefield. An athlete is developed in the heat of competition. And I become the woman of God that I am supposed to be through discipline and endurance in the hard times.
Do you want to be a woman of God?
And I mean a tried and true, faithful, enduring woman of God?
If you answered yes, then may I recommend that you buckle your seatbelt and get ready for battle. Because that is exactly where you become that woman.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul compares our Christian life to the life of an athlete. He writes:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24-27)
Picture an Olympic athlete or a well-conditioned soldier. What does it take to be that person? How many days are spent conditioning when no one is watching? How many lessons are learned in the heat of competition or battle that prepare them for the next one? Just how much do they endure to reach the top?
Are you doing that in your Christian walk? Are you running this race of life in a way that develops your spiritual strength and prepares you to obtain the prize?
As I study the life and writings of Paul, I am so taken by the message that he gives regarding endurance. Repeatedly throughout his writings, he likens the Christian life to the life of a warrior or athlete. He encourages others to train and fight hard. And to view hard times as a way to further build our spiritual strength.
Discipline. Passion. Gritting it out in the hard times.
That is what develops an athlete and a warrior.
And that is exactly what develops you and me into the women of God that we all want to be.
May I encourage you today to view those hard times and those moments of gritting-it-out discipline as training to become the woman of God who will stand before Jesus one day and receive the victor's crown.
Endure today, sweet friends. Endure and grow.
December