Home » Posts tagged 'THOSE WHO ENDURE TO THE END WILL BE SAVED'
Tag Archives: THOSE WHO ENDURE TO THE END WILL BE SAVED
ARE WE PRAYING THE WRONG WAY?
CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 28, 2023 – Jesus tells us: “Ye have not because ye ask not”. It’s his polite way of saying that we’re praying for the wrong things or not praying when we should be or perhaps not even praying at all.
And yet, my oh my, how some Christians love to pray! They’re like the Pharisees standing at the front of the temple or on the street corners, making sure that everyone sees and hears their holiness. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with prayer – it’s the most powerful force in the universe and our direct line to God and Jesus. But many Christians, for all their prayers, might just as well not be praying because they pray the wrong way.
That is to say, they’re praying for the wrong things.
For instance, instead of praying for God to give them the strength to endure whatever God permits them to endure, they pray to find a way to avoid their tests and punishments. What they’re essentially doing is praying to God to counteract his own justice.
Now, that’s a strange thing for Christians to do – to pray against God’s perfect justice! I’m not sure why people do that, other than they don’t know that they’re doing it or they see others praying that way and simply follow their lead. Certainly, like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, we can ask God if there’s some wriggle room in his Grand Scheme Of Things that would allow us not to suffer so much, but we also need to end our prayers with “not what I want, but what you want”, as Jesus famously did. Ultimately, we need to fully align our prayers with God’s will, so that instead of trying to avoid taking our knocks (whether as punishment or as tests), we head into battle fully armed with God’s Spirit.
And we should pray the same for others. When we pray for them to avoid their tests and punishments, we’re not helping them. These are not charitable prayers, to help people avoid what they need to go through. In fact, such prayers serve the devil’s purposes, not God’s. We need to pray that people have the strength to endure whatever God needs them to endure and to come out the other side victorious.
Every test and punishment that we overcome through patient endurance makes us spiritually stronger and better able to help ourselves and others. More importantly, everything we successfully endure brings us closer to God and Jesus and closer to Home. The only test that Jesus taught us to pray to avoid is the test of the Tribulation. This is something that we can with God’s full blessings pray to avoid.
So the next time someone asks you to pray for them, pray for what they’ve asked for, but also pray that God will give them the strength to endure whatever they have to endure and come out victorious and stronger in the end. And if you pray to God on your own behalf, pray the same thing – not to avoid the tests and punishments that are coming your way, but for the strength and grace to endure them.
This should always be our prayer – to align our will with God’s and to have his supernatural strength to “endure to the end”. If we make this our guiding prayer, I guarantee you that God will immediately answer it with a loud and resounding “DONE!”
RUNNING THE RACE TO WIN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 27, 2022 – What did Paul mean when he said “run the race to win”?
He meant we’re to give it everything we’ve got, even if we know we’re competing against faster runners. Because the winner in the race Paul’s talking about isn’t the one who comes first (or second or third), but all those who make it to the end. Making it all the way to the end is what will make us winners. Stopping short of the end won’t.
Jesus already ran the race, and won. In fact, he was first over the finish line. No matter how hard or how fast we run, we’re never going to beat that. Jesus had to run the race first or we wouldn’t have been able to. He set the course for us. We run the course that Jesus set.
*****
I saw a sign outside a church a couple of days ago that read “CONGRATULATIONS, BLUENOSE MARATHON PARTICIPANTS!” The Bluenose Marathon is an annual race that (usually) takes place in Halifax on the May long weekend. Like with other marathons held in other cities, the Bluenose Marathon clogs up the main arteries of Halifax and causes chaos with local traffic, particularly with transit. But that doesn’t matter, because people need to run. And amidst the thousands of runners, someone’s gotta win. But according to that church with the sign out front, even just participating in the race already is worthy of congratulations.
God disagrees. Being a participant in the race Paul talks about and Jesus ran is all well and good, and God will give you every advantage if you indicate that you want to run it, but you have it run it to win. You have to give your best shot not just at the starting line or towards the middle of the race, but all the way to the end. Which means you’ve got to make it to the finish line, or you ain’t gonna win.
There are no congratulations forthcoming for those who don’t make it to the finish line.
You don’t get congratulated just for participating. You get encouraged. You get assisted. You get guided and encouraged some more. But you don’t get congratulated unless you make it all the way to the end.
Jesus said those who endure to the end will be saved, not those who say they intend to endure or those who put in a few spiritual miles and then quit. Those who endure to the end will be saved, those who run the race to win.
*****
Shame on that church for lauding people just for participating. Shame on it! That is not a message that makes people want to endure to the end. That’s a message that makes people lazy and slack and proud of accomplishing nothing but showing up. Why are we congratulating people just for showing up? Is the bar really that low now?
You don’t have to answer that. We know what the answer is. Yes, the bar really is that low now, and I see it in every mainstream church that tells people all they have to do is “believe” and they’ll make it to Heaven. I guess that’s an improvement over telling people all they have to do is pay indulgences and they’ll make it to Heaven. That’s what the Catholic church used to promise people – pay a certain amount of money and you’ll get to Heaven. I don’t know what’s sadder about that – people demanding the money in the form of indulgences, or people believing you can buy your way into Heaven. But believing that you can simply “believe” your way in isn’t much better.
*****
We born-again believers can be better than that. We need to be better than that. We need to set our sights on the finish line and not stop until God sends his congratulations in the form of a one-way, first-class, all-expenses paid ticket to Heaven. We cannot stop halfway and consider the job done. We cannot let ourselves fall for the lies of those who tell us either it’s not necessary to run or that we’ve won already just by participating in the race.
We have not won until we endure to the end.
We run the race to win, even if it means we have to drag ourselves over the finish line by dint of sheer will.
Only those who endure the race to the end – to the very, very end – will be saved.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 