As human-beings, it seems like we’re all running this invisible, long, stretching race we call life that challenges us to our very core, and inevitably our faith and endurance comes into question. The only ones who seem to withstand this race are the ones with a solid foundation.
The race may be different for each and everyone of us – such as trying to stay pure in a sex dominated culture, trying not conform to the world but instead to God’s ways daily, not partaking in what your heart says, but what God instructs you to do, or still trusting God even when bad things happen to you or loved ones in life. All these things can have an individual questioning if this path is even for them, and more importantly if they are even equipped to finish the race that we are all called to run. When these thoughts, feelings, and especially issues of life come upon me, I try to reason with God like I think most of us do. I’m always left with asking God, “Why me, why now?” And honestly only (John 13:7 NLT) helps me and hopefully you make sense of it all, which states:
Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, but someday you will.”
It makes me believe and hope that all these things we may or may not have gone through yet, and ultimately these races we all have to run have to be for our benefit somehow, someway. Because in the midst of our storms and trials, they can have you and me thinking otherwise. Because God may or may not show us the whole picture of it all (our afflictions) and why we’re in or going through it. It could be to draw you nearer to Him, to knock off the rough edges off ourselves to make us more like Jesus, and maybe alert us to do what we actually lean onto the foundation (God) we claim as Christians. Just like (Matthew 7:24-27 NLT) reminds us all of wisely choosing our foundation wisely, it says:
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand.
When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”
Because through it all, that is what truly matters – who and what you cling to as your foundation to whether through your storms, to endure the race. To pull you over the finish line, and to hear job well done from God. To showcase to others and most importantly ourselves who got us through – God.
The things we all go through as people are crazy, and I believe we all can attest to this in our own individual lives. They’ll have us wanting to stop running and give up, worry, indulge in things that’ll give us these facades of peace, and a variety of other things that God doesn’t want us to partake in. But in the end only God can give us that real everlasting security and peace within our storms and hearts, that sense of security we all long for. I say this to us all: I hope you keep running, don’t stop, I hope you choose God as your foundation, the choice it’s up to each of us each and every day.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 7:24-27; John 13:7
