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WEEKLY ENCOURAGEMENT
Updated: Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Just don't give up!
"It is so hard, and I just don't think we are getting any where. It looks like little or nothing is being accomplished." Have you ever said these words? I have, more than once.
We set expectations, pray, invest time and work to accomplish what we feel the Lord has led us to do, and when the desired results are slow in coming, our flesh is tempted to give up. Persistence is however, a major key in accomplishing results. Let us consider the importance of persistence in other areas of life.
Did you know to produce one pound of honey, the bee must visit 56,000 clover heads, and 3,360,000 visits are necessary? To accomplish this task, the worker bee will have flown the equitant of three times around the world.
Michelangelo spent eight years of unrelenting toil, painting his master work "Last Judgment". Leonardo Da Vince worked ten years on "The Last Supper".
Thomas Edison sent men to China, Japan, South America, Jamaica, Ceylon and Burma in search of fibers and grasses to be tested in his laboratory. 1879, after thirteen months of repeated failures, he succeeded in finding a filament that would stand the stress of electric current. (Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations)
William Carey, a pioneer missionary to India worked and waited seven years for his first convert to Christ. He endured years of discouragement, disease and death of family members, but when he died at the age of 73, he had translated the scripture into forty languages. The Bible in these languages has continued to bring men to Christ long after Carey's death. (Profiles in Evangelism, 1976)
Adoniram Judson labored six years before he baptized his first convert. I prayed twenty-three years for my father's salvation. Iris prayed twenty- four years before Rainer, her husband, was saved, and the list could go on and on. The point is DO NOT GIVE UP!
We long for a harvest of souls or for wandering ones to return to the Lord. Be assured our Lord desires it far more than we do. The harvest is His responsibility, and if we allow our focus to remain only on the results, we will become discouraged, loose our joy and be tempted to quit. Regretfully, since statistics tell us that 15,000 pastors leave the ministry each month, many are yielding to this temptation.
After Adoniram Judson had been laboring for three years without any visible results, he was asked what evidence he had of ultimate success. He replied, "As much as there is a God who will fulfill all His promises." The God Mr. Judson was assured of is the same God you and I have.
Persistence is one of the keys to results and to endure in the spiritual realm it must be tied to faith. We persist, endure because it pleases Him and He will give the increase. Our Lord expects only that we live humbly obedient one day at a time.
"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." Galatians 6:9
POINT TO PONDER:Are you feeling discouraged about the work you are involved in? Take a minute and check what you are focusing on--- results or your Lord?
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- Sandy Hastings |
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