Sometimes it feels like a grind...

I'm talking about life. Sometimes life is a grind, we get up, we go to work, or school or both, we come home, we go to bed and we do it all again the next day. I heard a very profound saying the other day, "sometimes success can be just showing up the next day."

There are days we don't think we can go on. We are bored, we don't see a reason to do the same thing day after day until we are exhausted and beaten down to the point where we don't care anymore. Sometimes life is great, sometimes life is not so great but we must endure. Why? We must endure because as Christians we have another task, to spread God's love to all people.

Last year during Lnt I tried to fast during the day. It was going well until I felt like there was no point in continuing the fast because I was not growing spiritually, or so I thought, so I quit the fast. However looking on that experience now I see I was missing forgetting something very important. Sometimes spiritual growth is a grind. There are times we don't see the growth, we think we are not moving, but in fact we are moving, just maybe not in the direction we thought we would move.

If there is one thing I have learned since that experience is that there is a discipline required to live life. This discipline is what makes us show up on that day when we feel like there is no point. When we don't think something is working but we have committed to it we stick with it because of discipline. Being a Christian is a discipline and a commitment, are we fulfilling our commitment? Are we practicing our discipline? Or are we taking the easy way out when things get tough, or when we don't understand why we are doing something.

Submission is a discipline and it is humiliating but it is necessary and comforting because we gain a sort of protection from our master. We are given gifts and all our needs are cared for, all we have to do is have faith that we are loved by a completely loving God.

So I ask you, will you show up tomorrow? Will you show up when it all feels empty and routine? And will you be there when that time comes for you to do the job only you can do? You cannot be there if you don't get out of bed, if you don't ask God for strength when you feel that you cannot go it alone that day. All you have to do is be there and God will be there too, and He will use you when you least expect it. Just you wait and see.